Salaries unpaid: Secunderabad Cantonment Board sanitary staff may strike
HYDERABAD: As many as 380 outsourced sanitary workers of Secunderabad Cantonment Board whose salaries have not been put on hold by the board for the last two month are on a warpath. They threatened to go on strike if their salaries are not paid by the board at the earliest.
Speaking to Express, Sagarika, a sanitary worker, said: “I have been working for three years in the SCB. The officials and contractors haven’t paid our salaries for the past two months despite making several appeals to the authorities concerned.
We don’t have any other source of income to run the family,’’ she lamented. President of All India Trade Union Congress Narasimha said the SCB officials and contractors were playing the blame game. “When questioned, contractors say the salaries bills have been submitted to the SCB, but the board officials haven’t released the funds.
The contractors have also said that they paid the salaries for three months from their pockets and now they are helpless unless the SCB releases the pending bills,’’ Narasimha said.
Meanwhile the SCB officials admitted that salaries were not paid due to lack of funds, Narasimha claimed. He said Md Afzal Mahiuddin, superintendent of sanitation department, on the contrary alleged that without submitting the bills for pending salaries, how could they release funds. Due to this, the pending salaries haven’t been credited. Once the contractors submit the pending bills, the board would pay the salaries, Afzal reportedly told Narasimha.