NMC’s Rs 3 lakh cheque to dead employee’s kin bounces

NAGPUR: In a major embarrassment for Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), a cheque issued to the family of a deceased staffer of accounts and finance department bounced due to insufficient funds.
Now, chief accounts and finance officer Hemant Thakre has asked the kin of late Raju Rasekar to collect a fresh cheque of Rs3,31,980.
Rasekar worked with NMC for almost three decades and was a class IV employee with the NMC’s education department and was posted in NMC’s Hazaripahad school. Rasekar died on July 26 following a brief illness. As per procedure, apart from other benefits like family pension, the NMC’s accounts department handed over a Rs3,31,980 cheque drawn on Bank of Maharashtra towards leave encashment to Rasekar’s wife Mira on August 27.
As Rasekar’s salary account was with NMC’s Employees Credit Cooperative Bank, Mira deposited the cheque on the same day with the cooperative bank.
To her shock, Mira received a call from the cooperative bank on September 1 about the cheque having bounced. After enquiry, she was told that BoM returned the cheque as NMC’s account had insufficient balance. On Tuesday, Mira brought this to the notice of the NMC’s accounts department.
The incident again brought the civic body’s grim financial situation to fore. NMC has not paid income tax, failed to deposit provident fund contribution though it was deducting this from employees’ salaries, and is yet to pay outstanding Rs500 crore to various contractors.
The earlier municipal commissioner Tukaram Mundhe had stalled works and announced no new works due to financial crisis. In his last interaction with the media, Mundhe had said NMC may not achieve even half of the revenue target of Rs2,523.82 crore for 2020-2021.
Standing committee chairman Vijay Zalke expressed anguish over the cheque bounce case and maintained that NMC’s condition was not that bad. “I will inquire into the matter and the guilty officer will be punished,” he said, terming it a serious incident.