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 have been working without receiving salaries for over a year now. Two months dues from the previous year was paid to them back in April. This was the last form of payment they had received.
According to Dipul Marak, Chief Executive Member, GHADC, the GHADC will require a whooping 80 crore rupees to clear all pending salaries for 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 Sangma to try and find a solution to the problem.
The CEM and his Executive Committee members met the chief minister 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 the chief minister that the current financial crisis has affected not just the 2000 plus employees but even him and his fellow MDCs as well. There are currently 29 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 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 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 contributed 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.
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 into financial difficulty.
