Karnataka - Bangalore   

Poll work affects salary payment

Bangalore: A large number of State government employees have not received their salaries and allowances for April as officials in charge of preparing and clearing the salary bills had been deputed for election work.

Over 40 per cent of the employees, belonging to various departments such as Kannada and Culture, Public Works an the Social Welfare, could not draw their salary on time as the officials in their department responsible for preparing salary bills were also drafted for poll duty.

As preparation of salary bills is a specialised job, only such officers who are thoroughly conversant with finance are assigned the task. With even such officers not exempted from election work, the salary bills from the respective departments did not reach the treasury.

On their part, officials in the Department of Treasury assigned with the job of clearing the salary bills too were directed to take up election work. All these years, officials of the Department of Treasury were generally exempted from election work.

However, this time the Election Commission requisitioned the services of a large number of employees from this department. There are 216 treasury offices across the State. Of the 100 employees in the treasury headquarters, 38 were asked to report for election duty.

After these employees underwent training, the services of some of them were dispensed with and they were asked to go back to their office. A senior official of the Department of Treasury, on the condition of anonymity, admitted that there had been some delay in the payment of salaries.

The Department of Treasury generally receives the maximum number of salary bills between 25th of the month and 5th of the following month. But it was true that the treasury did not receive on time the salary bills from several departments this month, the official said.

He said that with the officials reporting back for duty, bills that had come to the treasury were being forthwith cleared.

It appeared that the Election Commission had drawn staff in “excess” of its needs and this had affected even routine work in the department.

On an average, the department clears over 50,000 salary bills of over 4.5 lakh government employees. It also clears pension, gratuity and bills covering other allowances.

With payment of salary being delayed, thousands of employees who had applied for and taken housing, education, marriage, vehicle and personal loans have been put to hardship.

With school admissions starting in a few days and CET counselling scheduled to start shortly, employees who are yet to receive their salary are at their wits’ end.

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