Salaries pending for three months; RTI plea elicits no response
Salaries pending for three months; RTI plea elicits no responseEverything comes at a price. So teachers in Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) schools are paying for the development work going on in the city for the Commonwealth Games. Many of them have not received their salary since three months.
The salaries have been delayed since June-July. Teachers said the reason being cited is the fund crunch because of ongoing work on Games projects.
With the huge budget given to the civic agency for the event, MCD is still short of resources to complete the pending works.
There are 1746 MCD schools in Delhi. 21,635 employees are sanctioned by the Delhi government, out of which 17,000 are teachers. MCD schools are located in 12 zones.
An RTI plea was filed by an MCD employee to find out the reason for the delays, but there has been no response. Instead, a few teachers in some of the zones were paid their due salaries by the agency, though two months late.
Earlier MCD had decided to pay only 20% of the teachers' respective salaries till October. But the faculty protested this decision, as many of them are the sole breadwinners of their families. Hence the MCD changed its agenda and said it would acquire a loan to pay the due salaries.
"CWG is the major reason behind the delay in payment of salaries of MCD employees. Other reasons are corruption in the zonal staff. First the draft goes to the zonal department, then to the DDA after which it is sent to the accounts branch and finally to ECS by the bank. There is a lot of discrepancy in the MCD's functioning, which leads to mismanagement. Teachers and other employees are suffering because of this," said Ram Krishan Punia, teachers' union leader.
Under 6th Pay Commission, teachers are to be paid their arrear together since 2006, but till now only 40 per cent of the total amount has been handed out. Also the employees have been informed that the remaining 60 per cent will be paid in parts when the MCD will have enough resources.
M Y Usmani, General Secretary of Teacher's Welfare Organisation said: "We are not sure when 60 per cent of the arrear amount will be given to the teachers and if at all it will be paid or not. As the MCD is having a financial crisis now due to CWG, 40 per cent of the area in the Civic Centre has been sold for Rs 18,000 crore out of which Rs 6,000 crore have been paid to the civic agency. So this will help procure funds for the delayed salary."
Deep Mathur, Spokesperson of MCD said: "The Games are not the reason behind the delay of payment of salaries of teachers. The MCD is having some financial crisis and some discrepancies have been reported. But we are managing somehow."u00a0u00a0
"The money that comes from the government for education purposes has not yet been given to us. So we have to delay the payment of teachers' salaries. Government wants to pay full attention to the Commonwealth Games first and only then would they look into other matters," said Dr Mahendra Nagpal, Chairperson of Education Committee.
Cag order
CWG Organising Committee has come in for criticism from government auditor CAG over appointment of two consultants for broadcast rights and sponsorship agreements. The Executive Board of the Committee approved M/s. Fast Track Sales Ltd as consultant for international broadcasting rights only on the basis of suggestions made by President (Michael Fennel), CEO (Mike Hooper) of the Commonwealth Games Federation and Chairman, OC (Suresh Kalmadi), an inspection report on the accounts of the OC said.
No detailed technical evaluation of bidders was carried out before the appointment of M/s. Fast Track Sales Ltd, the report said. There has been a projected loss of revenue of over Rs 24 crores on account of giving contract to Fast Track Sales Ltd (Rs 5.20 crore on account of increased commission) and due to deficiencies in the services of the consultant (Rs 19 crores).
However, OC Secretary General Lalit Bhanot said it was a well thought out decision to award the deal to Fast Track as they did not want to give too many contracts to Sports Marketing and Management, Australia, which already had bagged the sponsorship contract.
