Though the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has been claiming that it had been paying the salaries to all pourakarmikas on the rolls from January this year, it was revealed in the special council meeting that this was not the case. Hundreds of pourakarmikas on the rolls, armed with their bank passbooks, countered the claim of the BBMP.
BBMP Commissioner N. Manjunath Prasad admitted that though the head office had released funds towards disbursement of salaries to pourakarmikas, the zonal joint commissioners had failed to release the salaries on time. “Show cause notices will be issued to joint commissioners seeking their response on why there was a delay,” said Mr. Prasad, who has directed that pending salaries be paid in two days.
Earlier, BBMP’s Chief Accounts Officer Mahadev informed the council that as per biometric records, there were 15,474 pourakarmikas on the rolls, and that the head office had been releasing ₹27.01 crore towards their salary every month. Since January, the head office had released a total of ₹163 crore to the eight zones. Of the funds released, the excess is being used to pay the salary of 3,300-odd ‘excess pourakarmikas’ (those who are not on the rolls).
Responding to this, Opposition Leader Padmanabha Reddy sought to know how there was money if the BBMP had been paying salaries to all pourakarmikas, apart from the contributions towards their Employee State Insurance (ESI) and Provident Fund (PF).
Ruling Party Leader M. Shivaraju urged the commissioner to hold zonal commissioners responsible for the timely release of salaries.
Joint Commissioner (Health and Sold Waste Management) Sarfaraz Khan maintained that the civic body had made all the ESI payments. “There is some discrepancy in the PF account numbers, as many numbers are not matching. We are in talks with the Regional PF Commissioner in this regard,” he said.
The pourakarmikas, under the aegis of the BBMP Guttige Pourakarmikara Sangha, demanded that their pending salaries be cleared immediately. Sangha activists demanded a permanent job to Subramani’s wife, apart from providing ₹25 lakh as compensation.