Salem: Fund-starved Salem Municipal Corporation (SMC) is struggling to pay salaries to its employees and officials.
P Lakshmanan, president, Salem Corporation Engineering Employees’ Association, says, “We were expecting the SMC to release our salary for October before Diwali. But the finance department has refused to pay us, citing fund crunch.” Talking to TOI, he said the SMC used to pay the salary only after 10th of every month.
The SMC has around 3,000 employees, of them 1,000 in the engineering division alone. They are paid from the water, building tax collected from the public.
According to the employees, the SMC had been facing fund scarcity for the past few months and attributed the situation to the Covid-19 pandemic. “Many people failed to pay their tax during the period.”
The situation, however, seems to be improving with people staring to pay taxes from October. “We had collected Rs 50 crore in October and the amount was used to pay contractors for the works they carried out in the corporation areas,” Lakshmanan said. In the first 10 days of November, the SMC has collected Rs 2 crore. While the employees hoped the amount would be used to pay their salaries, it was used to settle the dues of four contractors.
K C Venkatachalam, retired assistant commissioner of SMC, says, “The SMC paid the contractors instead of paying our salary. The employees have been informed that they would be paid only after November 20.” He is also president of Salem Divisional Corporation and Municipalities Pensioners’ Association.
The SMC employees lamented they don’t have money to meet their Diwali expenses. “We don’t have money to buy clothes and other materials,” Venkatachalam said.
When contacted, Ramesh Babu, assistant commissioner of accounts, said they had issued Rs 10,000 per employee as festival advance. “We paid the advance amount on Tuesday evening. We will release the salary once we get sufficient funds.”
The employees TOI talked to, however, denied receiving the payment.