TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: Even as the government refuses to admit it is scraping the bottom of its coffers, amidst reports that staff salaries since January are being paid from the Contingency Fund, Forest Department, Bondla Division staff, have claimed that they have not been paid their salaries for the last three months.
The Goa Government Employees Union was forced to write to Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar asking him to pay the salaries, after discussions with forest department officials proved unfruitful in resolving the issue.
“This organisation made various efforts by discussing the matter with the Deputy Conservator of Forests Anil Kumar, and other department officers so that salaries of employees are paid immediately. However our efforts has yielded no results,” a letter from GGEA general secretary John Nazareth to the chief minister states.
According to the staffers, the regular employees working at Forest Department’s Bondla Division have not received their salaries for the last three months, from December 2014 onwards.
“This organisation therefore seek your immediate intervention to ensure that the salaries of the employees are paid without any further delay. It is also requested to order an enquiry in the delay and take appropriate action so that similar situation is not repeated in future,” GGEA said.
In January, the BJP government had decided to raise the Contingency Fund from Rs 200 crore to Rs 230 crore in view of the precarious financial situation of the State.
“We decided to temporarily enhance the Contingency Fund so as to meet the salary and other expenses,” Parsekar had said after the cabinet meeting that had cleared the proposal.
Explaining the logic behind the move, Parsekar said that once the government changed, he needed time to study the situation and so he had taken the decision to increase the fund.
The resource crunch is most starkly evident as Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation is facing a tough task in completing projects because it is short of resources and contractors while pending bills have crossed Rs 100 crore.
Sources say that the Rs 66 crore Miramar cement road project is likely to be delayed more than the rest of the projects, despite denials from officials since government does not have the money to pay the contractors.
