HYDERABAD: As on February 4, employees of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) had not received their salaries. Ironically, it is not because the State government has decided to provide 50 per cent rebate in property tax to citizens, but because of sanitation workers not attending to their duties properly.
According to officials, last year an internal circular was passed by GHMC Commissioner DS Lokesh Kumar that none of the 4,000 corporation employees would be paid their salaries till each of the 24,000 sanitation and entomology workers got paid.
“After the circular was issued last year, there has been a constant delay in salaries. As per the rules, we have to pay all sanitation employees their salaries by 1st of every month. However, the only reason that payment of their salaries is delayed is because of bills,” an official source from GHMC’s finance department said.
The official further said: “The corporation takes time to issue pay bills because it takes time to confirm that the employees have attended to their duties. This delays the preparation of bills.”
GHMC officials also confirmed that the corporation is doing well in collecting property tax. They have collected over `1,300 crore against the target of `1,900 crore for this financial year. The corporation is hopeful that the tax target would be reached by March 31. It’s not just the GHMC, employees of other departments have also complained that their salaries got delayed by four days this month. Most of them got their salaries on February 4.