MARGAO
The Margao Municipal Council witnessed an uproar on Wednesday after daily wage workers drafted for garbage collection work cried foul play over the payment of provident fund to be paid by the civic body.
They further claimed that though the order of the Director of Municipal Administration had issued an order stating that daily wage workers employed for garbage work are entitled for a daily wage of Rs 500, many of these workers now suspect that the civic body has paid them less than what the DMA had ordered under the guise of deducting provident fund.
To add to the confusion was the corrigendum issued by the Chief Officer Siddivinayak Naik, who directed the municipal section concerned to pay a daily wage of Rs 446 after deleting the words deduction of employer’s contribution from the employee’s wage.
As confusion reigned supreme over the mode of deduction of employer’s provident fund from the daily wage of Rs 500 and the resultant uproar witnessed in the civic body on Wednesday evening, the municipality has decided write to the Director of Municipal Administration to guide the Margao civic body on how to go about deducting the provident fund concerning the employer’s share of the fund. The daily wage employees further claimed that they have till date not received their provident fund book which would have given them a fair idea of the amount deducted by the civic body.
The daily wage workers, amongst whom were many women, all came upstairs in the municipal building on Wednesday evening seeking explanation on the deduction of provident fund, with some claiming that there’s been no uniformity in the deduction of the provident fund amount though they were putting in the same nature of work.
While the workers left the municipal building after meeting Vice-chairperson Tito Cardozo and the OSD to the chairperson, one question that, however, remained unanswered is whether the civic body was right in deducting the employer’s share of the provident fund from the daily wage of Rs 500 fixed by the government.
A section of municipal officials maintained that since the DMA’s order entitled Rs 500 daily wages to the workers in garbage collection, they wondered whether it was prudent on part of the civic body to deduct its share of PF from the amount or was it duty bound in contributing its share separately.
