Employees without salary for 15 months
SHILLONG: The Housing department has submitted a proposal to the State Government to come up with the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) for 39 employees of the Housing Board.
“We have submitted this proposal since the department has not been able to arrange the necessary funds for payment of their salary,” the Housing department director RM Kurbah said here on Friday.
She admitted that the department has not been able to pay salary to the employees for the past 15 months.
“We have requested the Government to allocate funds for payment of salary. So far, there has been no response from the Government,” Kurbah said.
Informing that the Government allocates a total amount of Rs 15 lakh for the board annually, he said that this is too meager amount since the fund required for payment of salary alone every month is Rs 12 lakh.
“This is why the department is not able to pay salary to the board employees on time,” the Housing department director said.
Meanwhile, she informed that the board was generating its own revenue till 2000 from the interest of the housing loan scheme which they are providing to the poor beneficiaries.
“There is no generation of the revenue on the part of the board since 2000 after the Government decided to discontinue the housing loan,” she said.
As per the CAG report, the board utilized the balance of Rs 22.13 crore to repay a part of the loan taken and to meet its expenses.
As the board’s loan recovery was poor, the housing department in May 2000 directed the board to stop sanctioning fresh housing loans and to trim its administrative expenditure, the CAG report had stated.
Earlier, The Meghalaya State Housing Board Employees Union (MSHBEN) has sought the intervention of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Chairman, Hoping Stone Lyngdoh to ask the Government to release their salaries for the past 15 months.
“This is not the first time that we have not received our salaries. Earlier, the board could not provide our salaries for five months (from September 2012 to January 2013),” MSHBEN general secretary D Lyngdoh stated in the memorandum Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Chairman adding that the employees are facing immense difficulties in meeting their day to day expenses.
“There is mounting pressure from house owners to vacate the houses due to the non-payment of rent. Store owners are reluctant to provide us with the commodities,” Lyngdoh said while urging the concerned authorities to the release the pending salaries on humanitarian grounds.