TEAM HERALD
MARGAO: With just five days for the month to end, the Margao Municipal Council finds itself in a tight spot over paying salary to its staff.
Civic babus now pin their hopes on the government to bail out MMC with the timely release of Rs 2.5 crore salary grant and the Octroi instalment amounting to Rs 1.65 crore to save the municipality from premature withdrawal of fixed deposits.
Presently, MMC has only around Rs 20-25 lakh in its coffers while the salary bill is pegged at around Rs 1.30 crore. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed, admitting in private that the Civic body will have no option than to encash the fixed deposits if the government fails to despatch the salary grant and Octroi before November 30.
“Unless the salary grant and the octroi is received by the Municipality in the next 3-4 days, the civic body will have no option than to fall back on the fixed deposits to pay the salaries”, remarked an official.
Incidentally, though the MMC has received an order from the government on the payment of Octroi instalment, the civic body is yet to receive the cheque till date.
That the civic body is passing through a bad financial phase is evident by the fact that the Municipality has failed to make the loan repayments of the employees despite carrying out deductions.
Last week, Municipal employees made a representation to the Chief Officer Narayan Sawant demanding that the civic body make the loan repayments on time. In fact, this was perhaps for the first time that though the Civic body had deducted the loan instalments of the employees, the same was not paid to the banks, sources said.
It was just last month that the MMC had prematurely withdrawn fixed deposits amounting to Rs 90 lakh to clear the salary bill of the employees.
