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| Shocking! Resourceful MC Anantnag doesn’t have money to pay sanitation workers | | ‘40 influential female employees don’t attend office but draw salaries’ | | Saahil Suhail
Early Times Report
Anantnag, May 11: Despite being blessed with huge assets and resources, the Anantnag Municipal Council ironically doesn’t have money to release salaries of its sanitation workers. The workers again held protests on Monday and demanded release of their due salaries.
“Daily wagers are without salaries from last six month and regular employees are without salaries from last three months. No one from the government is intervening into our issue. We risk our lives to keep the town safe but the government isn’t taking note of our sufferings,” sanitation workers said.
They threatened to go on indefinite strike from 15th of May if their demands weren’t fulfilled. “We don’t have food and milk at our homes. We are suffering and requested LG GC Murmu to intervene,” they said. However, the repeated protests of sanitation workers have brought the Anantnag Municipal Council under public scanner.
According to Anantnag MC Officials, the council has 670 shops at different locations in Anantnag; however it charges meager amounts as rent. “At Khanabal, MC Anantnag is charging just Rs 90 per month from shopkeepers,” an official, pleading anonymity said.
“This has been going on from last several decades even the employees till recent years weren’t depositing the amount they used to collect from shopkeepers as rent,” he added.
Five Toll Posts, a dozen parking slots and over 10,000 (Ten Thousand) shops and commercial establishments’ also fetch good amount of revenue to Anantnag Municipal Council, however the mismanagement, backdoor appointments and financial irregularities continue to deprive its employees from the hard earned salaries.
“Each year the council issues hundreds of building permission but no one knows where the money goes,” social and political activist, Iftikar Misger told Early Times over Phone. From past several weeks, Misger is campaigning on social media sites in an effort to shift focus of Government towards Anantnag Municipal Council.
The Municipal Council Anantnag is blessed with huge assets and resources and it shocked me to see the employees particularly sanitation workers who we call frontline heroes protesting for release of their salaries. The Government must intervene and check itself the loopholes, he said.
The council has also failed to carry out any major developmental activity in the town neither has added anything to its assets. The Council instead of paying to sanitation workers was paying to around 40 female employees, who according to sources weren’t even attending office from last several months. “The Backdoor and illegal appointments were also draining out revenue of Municipal Council Anantnag,” officials said.
President Municipal Council Anantnag, Hilal Ahmad Shah admitted that their assets weren’t generating much revenue and that the council too has failed to revise rent rates and trade fare rates from last many decades.
“In 2014, Anantnag Municipal Council had revised the rates but I found it was all full of disparity. Barber was taxed must and factory owner was taxed less so in 2019 once I assumed the charge I decided to revise it and brought the Anantnag trade community on board. We were about to bring the trade fare list in public domain in first week August but then the situation that unfolded after August 4,2019 didn’t allow us to do that but we will revise the situation once this covid ends,” he said. |
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