Chandigarh Municipal Corporation’s financial crisis deepens

Sandeep Rana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 3

Chandigarh Municipal Corporation employees, including frontline workers, have not yet received the salary for April.

The MC’s financial crisis has deepened to an extent that the corporation now has to use its FDRs and other dedicated funds. A senior MC official said till now, they did not use FDRs as they would not have received enough interest.

The MC’s grant-in-aid for the 2021-22 fiscal has not yet been cleared by the UT Administration. It was in February that the MC had approved Rs1,641 Budget, but till now, it did not get even a single penny.

“We get salary on the last day of each month. If there is a holiday on that day, we get it one day in advance. But this time, we have not received the salary. I got to know that the MC has zero balance to pay us. We have our own family expenses to pay and there is no information when we will get the salary,” said one of the regular employees.

“Since they knew they have no grant, they should have made FDR-related arrangements a week ago,” added another employee.

Additional Commissioner Anil Garg, who heads the accounts wing, said: “We have made arrangements for salaries from FDRs. There was some issue today. The salaries will be credited on Tuesday.”

The corporation spends about Rs50 crore on salaries and other unavoidable expenses per month. There are around total 9200 employees. About 3500 are regulars others are contractual and outsourced employees. Of them, about 6000 were frontline workers last year when the first wave of the pandemic hit the city in March.

This year also, some of them are working as frontline workers contract tracing and quarantine and sanitation departments.