TURA: The financial problem of the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) has, once again, come to haunt its employees who have not been paid their monthly dues for the last sixteen months.
Several hundred council employees are having to work without being paid their salaries for over a year now. The last time they got any form of salary was of the previous year’s two months dues.
The employees were paid two months of the previous year’s dues in April, this year.
According to Chief Executive Member of GHADC Dipul Marak, the GHADC will require a whooping 80 Crores of rupees to clear all pending salaries up to date of over two thousand of its employees.
In the face of burgeoning financial liability, the current NPP led Executive Committee headed by Chief Executive Member (CEM) Dipul Marak has rushed to Shillong to hold parlays with Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma to try and find a solution to the problem.
The CEM and his Executive Committee members met with Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma in Shillong as part of a delegation of the CEMs of all three district councils in the state.
Dipul Marak apprised the chief minister about the huge financial burden facing the GHADC. He informed Chief Minister Conrad Sangma that the current financial crisis has affected not just the 2000 plus employees but even him and his fellow MDCs as well. There are 29 directly elected MDCs in the GHADC.
The GHADC CEM also said that any decision on reducing the number of staff in the council would only be taken after having a meeting with the state government.
It is learnt that the Executive Committee of the GHADC will pursue the state government to release the council’s financial share from the major and minor minerals, revenue of which is collected by the state from coal, limestone and other mineral extraction and export.
The National Green Tribunal ban on rat hole coal mining in the state leading to a major loss of revenue as well as the district council’s inability to generate sufficient resources for itself and the ever increasing number of employees in the GHADC is having a serious impact on the financial position of the GHADC.
This financial problem in the GHADC has been increasing annually over the past ten years and successive state governments and council ECs’ have failed to find a permanent solution preferring to instead bail out the autonomous body with a ‘one time’ financial package each time it fell in financial difficulty.