TURA, SEPT 9: Meghalaya’s Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) ON Friday decided to seek special central assistance to end the deadlock over pending salaries, which has forced over 1800 employees of the council to go on an indefinite strike.
The council staffs have pending salaries for 9 months.
The non-gazetted employees of the council are on indefinite strike since Monday, which has disrupted the functioning of the council.
The chief executive member (CEM) of the council Denang T. Sangma said, “We are holding talks with the agitating staffs on a regular basis and have assured them that the pending salaries would be cleared by the end of this month. We will seek special central assistance to resolve the ongoing agitation”.
Talking on the impasse over pending salaries, the CEM attributed the previous Congress led executive committee (EC) responsible for the mismanagement of funds. “The earlier committee had withdrawn Rs. 22 crore advance royalty from the state government for major and minor minerals, which posed a challenge for us”, the CEM said.
The previous EC had withdrawn Rs. 18 crore advance coal royalty from the state government and Rs. 4 crore royalty for minor mineral. They had also withdrawn Rs. 5 crore royalty from Forest and Environment.
The state government has to share royalty to district councils of the state.
Defending their position of ruling the council for the past 10 months, the CEM said, “We have been able to clear salaries for five months and release the DA arrears for nine months. However, the problem has escalated because the earlier EC had withdrawn the council share in advance, just ahead of the GHADC election”.
National People’s Party (NPP) and its allies are ruling the council.
Recently, the council has released pending salaries for the month of July 2015 to November 2015.
Augustine Marak, deputy CEM and spokesperson of the council stated that they had approached the state government for release of advance royalty, which was done for the previous Congress led EC, which was however denied.
“The state government did not consider our plea as National Green Tribunal (NGT) has banned coal mining”, Marak said adding, “The earlier EC had taken advance, so our request was not considered”.
When asked on the whereabouts of the advance royalty collected by the previous EC, Marak said, “There are not much records on the money. However, verbal records say that the money was spent to clear pending dues of various contract works. We have constituted a committee to look into the matter”.
Marak said that there has been mismanagement of funds, which needs a through probe. He said that the council has entrusted Hyderabad based centre for good governance to work out modalities to revamp and restructure the functioning of council, which will help in efficient management.
He informed that their EC has created a new single window in the council treasury for deposit of all taxes, which has helped the council in streamlining the system.
On central special assistant grant of Rs. 100 crore for GHADC, which is yet to be released by the state government, Marak hoped that in the ongoing autumn session of the Meghalaya legislative assembly it would be passed.-From Our Correspondent
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