TURA, Feb 26: Amid the commotion over the non-payment of salaries to the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) employees and the demand for release of several crores of rupees allegedly lodged in a few state departments, the Council Administrator on Friday dismissed the claims, stating that the GHADC has no funds pending with the state government.
Speaking to The Shillong Times on Friday, GHADC Administrator Dr Vijay Kumar D, who is also the Commissioner and Secretary of Finance in the Meghalaya government, said, “The GHADC has no pending funds to be drawn from the government.”
This clarification holds significance as the protesting GHADC employees have been alleging that Rs 55 crore is pending with the state. However, after the top finance official’s statement, the ball is now in the court of the striking employees for future course of action.
The GHADC has been paralysed by the strike since Monday as several hundred non-gazetted employees have boycotted work, demanding of that authorities to clear all the salaries pending for over two and a half years.
The striking workers, under the aegis of Non-Gazetted Employees Association (NGEA), have been claiming that money to the tune of Rs 55 crore, meant to the GHADC by way of royalty, is pending with three government departments, viz. Directorate of Minerals, transport and forest.
That claim has now been contested by the GHADC Administrator who had informed the leaders of NGEA during a meeting on Wednesday that the state neither has money nor dues to give to the cash-strapped Council.
Instead, the Administrator has announced that apart from the two-month salary disbursement made in December, another month of dues will be doled out by March 12. The disbursement will be the dues for September, 2018.
Two days after the meeting between the Administrator and the leaders of NGEA, there appears to be no breakthrough as the employees refuse to join duty and remain adamant that their dues must be cleared first for work to resume.
With another working week in the horizon and the financial year closing in just four and a half weeks, collection of revenue could be adversely affected, plummeting the already cash-starved autonomous council deeper into debt.
