Patna, May 19: Citing funds crunch, the Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) has expressed its inability to pay outstanding salaries to the employees of its water supply wing. The corporation has agreed to pay them the salary of a month, though.

The employees are cut-up with the decision. But they decided against going on strike realising the practical problem of the civic body.

Jyoti Gupta, the union leader of the PMC water board employees, said those on the master roles had not been paid salaries for the past six months. The daily wagers and those on contract were not paid for even longer.

Sources in the government agency said the corporation’s annual revenue is around Rs 40 crore. It spends about Rs 48 crore per annum on salaries of employees.

Gupta said: “We were in complete mood to fight but PMC commissioner said after paying a month’s salary to the employees the civic body will completely run out of funds. If we proceed on strike now, the residents of the city will suffer as it is peak summer time and water demand is at its highest. Therefore, we decided against it.”

She said the commissioner had invited the union leaders for talks on Tuesday. Of the 260 employees in the wing, 150 were keen to adopt the “no pay, no work” policy. But they were persuaded not to go on strike.

“As a large number of these employees are water pump drivers and conductors, their absence from work would have hit the water supply for sure if they stopped reporting to duty,” she said, adding the PMC commissioner has assured the employees of all efforts to generate funds so that they could get salaries on time in future.

Earlier this month, the board employees had stormed into the PMC office at Maurya Lok shopping complex demanding outstanding salaries and had staged a dharna. The protesting employees had gone on a symbolic two-day strike on May 10 and 11 after their strike in March failed to move the officials.

Ram’s wife gets job

The civic body has passed an interim order to imme- diately employ Dayanand Ram’s wife as a daily wager. Ram, a daily wager of the water board, had self-immolated himself outside the PMC office in September last year. The corporation employees have been demanding to appoint his wife in the government agency on compassionate grounds.