TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
MARGAO: Resentment is brewing in the Cuncolim Municipal Council over the inordinate delay in clearing the payment of wages of the daily wage and contract workers employed by the civic body.
While aggrieved Municipal workers told the media on Wednesday morning that they have not been paid their wages from March till date, the civic body claimed that wages of 31 employees were cleared in the evening. However, payment of wages of the drivers and two LDCs working on daily wage has been held up for reasons best known to the civic babus. “Why can’t the city fathers and the chief Officer understand the fact that we all have families to look after back home. This is the first time that our payments were held up for the last 22 days for no rhyme or reason”, remarked an agitated civic employee.
When Herald contacted CMC Chairperson Devendra Desai to throw light on the delay in clearing the payments for the daily wage workers, including workers employed for the garbage collection work, he pointed fingers at the newly appointed Chief Officer, Maya Pednekar, saying that salary and wage payment fall within the domain of administrative work under the Chief Officer.
When contacted, Chief Officer Pednekar said she has cleared the payments of the 31 daily wage workers on Wednesday evening after verifying the documents. The wages of the remaining workers will be paid after scrutiny of the documents, she added.
When pointed out that these workers have been working in the Civic body for the last 3-4 years and had received their payments on time in the past, Pednekar said “I am not concerned how my predecessors had cleared the payments during their tenure. I have to satisfy myself that the payments to the daily wage workers are done as per the norms”, she said.Families of the beleaguered workers were contemplating of calling on the Director of Municipal Administration Elvis Gomes, who hails from Cuncolim, to intervene and give justice to the daily wage workers.
