TEAM HERALD
MARGAO: Margao Municipal Council’s door-to-door waste collection may go haywire if the 170 daily wage workers execute their threat to stop waste collection from Friday for the non-payment of their wages.
While the MMC sought to pass the buck to the DMA’s office, saying the civic body could not make the payments for want of government grant, the DMA’s office asserted that nothing ought to have stopped the civic body from making the payments by drawing money from the civic coffers.
Agitated daily wage workers assembled in front of the Municipal building on Thursday noon and protested against the one-and-half month delay by the civic body to disburse their wages for the month of August. Even as they held out the threat to stall work on the door-to-door exercise Friday if the civic body failed to make the payments by tomorrow, some of the councillors and member of the Margao Solid Waste management Cell Savio Coutinho tried to calm down ruffled weathers by assuring the workers that efforts are on to make their payments at the earliest.
When Herald contacted DMA Elvis Gomes to shed light on the delay in according the government sanction, he said the process is presently underway. He, however, said that the civic body could have used money from its coffers to make the payments by obtaining permission from his office.
Ruling councillor Raju Naik has suspected a conspiracy behind the entire episode, saying deliberate attempts are on to tarnish the image of the ruling body. “Why should the ruling body face the blame if the government funds are not forthcoming”, he demanded to know.
Coutinho, on the other hand, demanded that the civic body pay the workers their wage without any further delay since the government has already announced funds to the Council.
