Chief Minister Conrad Sangma today said that the State government cannot take full responsibility for releasing the salary of employees of Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC).
GHADC employees said that they are yet to be paid 32 months of accumulated salary dues. The last payment being two months’ worth was in December 2023.
“The government has been supporting in every way possible but the primary responsibility lies with the autonomous councils because they are autonomous and they have to take care of their finances and their reforms and other steps and administer themselves independently. We are here to help and support, but we cannot take full responsibility for giving the salary,” Sangma told media persons here today.
Stating that the salaries were paid in the last two or three years and it is incorrect to say that 32 months’ salary is still pending, Sangma however said that the details of the pending salary can be obtained from the GHADC.
When asked if the royalty shares to the GHADC are too low to pay the employees, Sangma admitted that because of the coal mining ban, a lot of revenue sources have become limited.
“The non tax revenue has gone down as you’re aware because of the different challenges we faced with the mining procedure and process and all the bans that took place earlier. So we are yet to recover fully and obviously the district councils are affected,” he added.
Sangma however said that the district councils in Garo Hills and Jaintia Hills have refrained from employing new people which according to him is very good as the two councils are overstaffed and the manpower exceeded the requirement.
“In certain cases, there have also been appointments which are not sanctioned posts that happened on quite a large scale. These kinds of things need to be rectified and hopefully, in the future, it will not happen,” he added.
According to Sangma, at one point in time the number of employees at GHADC was about 2300 and today the council has managed to bring it down to about 1500.
“We are seeing things improving, but obviously, the gap is too big. So it will take a bit more time but I’m happy to see that at least efforts are being made and refraining from appointing new people,” he opined.
