Not paid for two months, MC employees stage stir

Ludhiana: With unpaid salaries for the months of May and June, the municipal corporation employees staged a protest at its Zone A office on Monday.
The employees had given a 72-hour ultimatum to the MC authorities for release of their salaries. Since the MC could not release salaries in the given time period, the disgruntled employees took to protesting to get their issue resolved. They ended their protest only after getting assurance from mayor Balkar Sandhu that the MC will pay salaries for both months in July.
Chairman of Municipal Employees Sangharsh Committee, Ashwani Sahota, said, “The Mayor has given an assurance to all the employees that they will get salary for the month of May in the next couple of days while the salary for June will be cleared in 15 to 20 days. He said the employees, especially class four, are facing problems because they get a meagre salary for running their households and if it is delayed for two months, it will become difficult for them to survive.”
Requesting anonymity, one of the MC employees claimed that they have already received letters from the banks for not paying the EMIs of home loans and car loans. He said entire budget of his household is in chaos.
Mayor Balkar Sandhu said he has already conveyed the local bodies minister, Brahm Mohindra, for release of GST instalment so that employees could get salaries, who in turn has assured it will be paid to MC in the next two days. He said they will clear the salaries as soon as the GST instalment is credited. He said, “Since Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has recently taken over charge of her ministry, the government was not able to issue the GST instalments to the state governments on time which delayed payment to MC as well.