MARGAO
It’s official. Margao municipal employees and daily wages had to go without salaries and wages on Tuesday for February as the civic body could not credit the payments for want of sufficient funds in the Municipal coffers.
City fathers and municipal babus now pin their hopes on the MMC Accounts cum Administrative Officer to get the salary grant from the government amounting to over Rs two crore to bail the civic body from embarrassment. For, civic officials admitted in private that the funds in the municipal treasury will not suffice to meet the salary and wage bill amounting to over Rs two crore.
It has been a long tradition in the Margao Municipal Council that the salaries and wages of the employees and daily wage workers are credited on the last day of the month. This is perhaps the first time in many months that the civic body struggled to arrange the funds to meet the salary and wage bill.
The Goan understands that the funds available in the treasury are not sufficient even to meet half the salary and wage bill. Hence, the MMC is now pinning its hopes on the government to release the salary grant amounting to Rs two crore to bail out the civic body.
Chairperson Damu Shirodkar took stock of the situation on Tuesday evening with Chief Officer Manuel Barretto and the Accounts and Administrative Officer. It was decided to draft the Accounts and Administrative officer to Panaji on Wednesday to set in motion the process to tap the salary grant from the government, with the hope that the government release the salary grant in the next 2-3 days, paving the way for the disbursement of the salaries and wages.
“This time around, the civic body is totally dependent on the government to bail it out from the situation by releasing the salary grant. The cash position in the treasury will not be able to meet the salary bill,” sources said.
The MMC’s monthly salary bill is pegged at a little over Rs 1.50 crore and the total bill crosses the Rs two crore figure if the wage bill of the daily wage workers and the payments to the door-to-door waste collection agencies are taken into account.
