BENGALURU:
BBMP marshals who were tasked with the responsibility of enforcing
Covid-19 norms such as ensuring people wore masks and maintained social distancing to check the spread of the virus have not been paid for three months now. One of the reasons cited for the delay is a BBMP decision to pay salaries to marshals from fines they collect and related files being held up at various levels.
Marshals were originally recruited to help BBMP manage solid waste in the city, but when Covid-19 kicked in, they were put in charge of enforcing Covid-19 safety rules. Initially they had the sole power to levy fines on violators, but given the mammoth task and since marshals were often the butt of public ire, BBMP brass decided to rope in police to assist them.
Marshals, who, after deductions of about Rs 1,500 draw a salary of Rs 17,000 every month, were set targets to book violations. While the target is informal in most zones, it is official in south zone. Yet, marshals themselves have not been paid for three months and they say they are in distress and are finding it difficult to run their families.
Ganesh K, a BBMP marshal in south zone, says they work for 12 hours a day and have a target to book at least 10 cases daily. “We had not been paid for the past three months,” he said. “On Saturday we were given a month’s salary.”
Ganesh said work pressure is immense and if salary continues to be delayed he would be forced to quit. “Collecting fines has become a major agenda but for us working on the ground, we feel bad when we penalise people,” he said. “We should have been deployed to warn citizens and to insist they wear masks. Most of the people who we fine are daily-wage labourers who work hard to earn a living. We have no choice but to collect fines from them.”
Lohith SN, another marshal, said they went without salary for 90 days at a stretch. “There are people who depend on me at home. It is not as if the Palike informed us earlier about the situation. I had to borrow cash on interest from a private lender to run my family,” he said.
BBMP sources say Karnataka Ex-servicemen Welfare Society (KEWS) outsources marshals to BBMP and that there are about 300 marshals in the city. “Salaries have been delayed after a new special commissioner (finance) took charge. The special commissioner had wanted clarifications which will be released soon,” said the source.
Asked why salaries were delayed for three months, a BBMP officer said that there were irregularities in payments which led to salaries being withheld for some time. It may be recalled in the week of October, BBMP commissioner N Manjunatha Prasad wrote to the state government asking it to repatriate an official in the Palike’s accounts office to his parent revenue department citing financial irregularities.
Officials say there were financial irregularities in four different categories — Rs 7.9 crore in general allotment, Rs 7.7 crore in special commissioner funds, Rs 5.8 crore in state finance commission funds and Rs 7 crore in offline payment to the Gandhinagar executive engineer.
BBMP special commissioner Randeep D said salary bills have been sent to the finance department and would be released soon.
“As per a decision, we wanted to pay salaries from the fines marshals collected rather than taking it from BBMP accounts,” Randeep said.
Asked why there was a delay, he said that it was because some files remained pending in the chief accounts office and they have not been cleared.