GMC officials demonstrate on Monday. Picture by Eastern Projections

Dec. 15: The Guwahati Municipal Corporation Employees’ Union today temporarily suspended their agitation after new GMC commissioner S.K. Roy, who took over charge today, assured the employees to look into their grievance.

The union went on a dharna in front of the GMC office at Kachari in the city today in protest against non-payment of last month’s salaries to the employees, but they called off the stir immediately after Roy took over charge and assured to look into the matter.

“We had a discussions with the new commissioner whom we found quite reasonable and since he has just taken over charge today, we thought of giving him some time,” secretary of the union Chandan Sharma said.

After a brief meeting with the union members, Roy rushed to Dispur to discuss the corporation’s financial problem vis-à-vis the union’s demand with the finance department officials.

Apart from payment of salaries, the union is also pressing the corporation to clear the pension backlog. Sharma said many employees, who retired recently, have not received their pension. The union had earlier given an ultimatum to release the employees’ salaries by Saturday, which the cash-strapped corporation failed to comply. The GMC needs around Rs 1.65 crore per month to pay salaries to its 2, 732 employees.

A senior GMC official said the corporation was not in a position to pay salaries to its staff from its existing revenue as the annual revenue it had mobilised from trade licenses etc., has already been utilised.

He said if the government did not pitch in with additional fund or by clearing its outstanding liabilities, it would be difficult for the corporation to meet the employees’ demand. The state government’s outstanding dues to GMC is around Rs 40 crore.

The GMC’s annual expenditure is around Rs 32 crore while its annual revenue earning is only around Rs 21 crore, leaving a deficit of around Rs 11 crore every year. Sharma said if the salaries were not released within the extended two days’ period, the employees would be compelled to re-launch their agitation.

“This time we have extended the deadline because the commissioner took charge only today. It would have been unfair on our part not to give him some time for resolving the problem. But having said that, it is also not possible for us to go on sustaining on promises and assurances,” the union leader said.

“Victimising employees” for financial constraint of the corporation has become the norm, the union leader said, alleging that the corporation was now even diverting the provident funds of the employees to garbage clearing work.

“Without depositing Rs 28 lakh it monthly deduct from the employees for provident fund, the corporation is utilising the money for clearing garbage, construction of roads and so on,” the union leader said.

The employees attributed the financial crunch to “wrong government policy” and said the GMC could sustain on its own if the state government compensated it for the revenue-loss of Rs 15 crore for closure of the GMC check gates.