Shillong, Nov. 14: A delegation led by Meghalaya chief minister D.D. Lapang will meet Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday to discuss the release of money from this year’s plan allocation.
A majority of state government employees are unhappy over the Meghalaya treasury’s recent instruction to defer the release of pending arrears after the implementation of the Fourth Pay Commission.
The director of accounts, treasury, recently asked all the government departments in the state to hold back the release of 40 per cent arrears pending since 2007 because of a paucity of funds.
The order came after some government employees had withdrawn the arrears along with their salaries.
Principal secretary (finance) B.K. Dev Verma, who is part of the state delegation, along with deputy chief minister in-charge (finance) Mukul Sangma, said they would meet the Union finance minister and request him to release some funds from the plan allocation.
The Meghalaya government had in August cleared a 32 per cent pay hike for all the state government employees with retrospective effect from January 1, 2007, according to the recommendations of the Fourth Pay Commission.
The cabinet also approved the withdrawal of the new salary from October. It would mean an additional Rs 330 crore annually for the 70,000 employees in the state.
The arrears will come to around Rs 660 crore, which will be cleared in a phased manner; 40 per cent this year and the remaining amount over the next few years.
Officials of the state treasury realised that funds were limited to provide arrears to all the government employees. On Thursday, directives were issued to the government departments to keep in abeyance the further release of arrears. Some employees said the release of arrears should have been uniform.
Verma said the finance department would find out what went wrong as far as the drawing of arrears was concerned.
He said the money for the arrears would come from the Centre only from January next year. “We had earlier requested the Centre to allow us to use a portion of the plan size of Rs 2,100 crore for this year to clear the pending arrears,” Verma said.