Ghost employees and illegal appointments lie at the root of the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council’s (GHADC) financial crisis, said Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma, as pressure builds over the non-payment of salaries to employees for the past 43 months. Holding the previous Congress-led Executive Committee responsible, the Chief Minister said the system was wrecked by “appointments made without any service rules, without any sanction post.”
He said, “Garo Hills Autonomous District Council had over 2000 employees when National People’s Party took over, 2000 employees. To give you relative picture of what that means the Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council had roughly about 1800 employees and the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council had about 600 employees. Clearly the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council was way above the requirement that they had in terms of your appointments.”
On the burden of salaries, he noted, “The salaries that they pay is touching about Rs six to seven crores as of now. The Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council at that point when we have taken over was being a salary of about Rs 4 crores… Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council was paying salaries about Rs five crores.”
The Chief Minister said that “revenue is about Rs one and a half to Rs two crores per month and salary alone is about Rs six. Grows… So clear deficit about Rs five crores.” He added, “The then E.C which was run by the Congress… they were appointing people left right and centre to the point that that touched more than 2000 employees, which is four times that of the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council.”
On the issue of ghost employees, Sangma said, “We went through the whole list. There were a large number of ghosts employees names, we removed those names. We have not appointed a single person from the day we took over till now because we realise that it’s impossible to run the system.”
He further said, “From 2000 plus employees today, there are about 1300 employees in Garo Hills district council.”
Clarifying the state’s role, the Chief Minister said, “The district councils are autonomous bodies, they run on their own as per their own mandate and they have a separate administration and separate budget, separate revenue and separate expenditure. It is not the responsibility of the state Government to pay their salaries.”
He explained, “In the last three years the government of Meghalaya has given an advance amount of Rs 120 crores to the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council which is over and above the amount that is due… Out of this 120 crores that we have given salaries of, I don’t have the exact number with me, but close to 25 months to 28 months I think of salaries have been cleared by the district Council.”
He added, “The dues that are there in Garo Hills Autonomous District council are dues, which are pending for the last eight years – nine years… sometime in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017. All these years was salaries have appending. Those have piled up and has come and in gaps and different levels.”
The Chief Minister said, “We are giving support… last week we had given 35 crores, was released to Jaintia Hills autonomous District Council as per the share that was meant for them.”
Highlighting the NPP’s approach, he said, “When NPP came in, I gave a very clear instruction. I’m not anybody to interfere in the working of the council but I took a review and I told them no more appointments.”
On the path ahead, Sangma said, “We have been now able to slowly slowly slowly bring things at the control… We’ve taken tough decision, how difficult it is because expectations are there people expect that we’ll employ people, the forces become vacant, why into appointing people? But we saw that those posts that were appointed were actually not done in a legal manner.”
“If there is anybody to kind of, you know, blame in this whole situation is the previous dispensation, which, as I said, appointed people left, right and centre without looking at the revenue without looking at the funds and most importantly, without following the rules and procedures,” he said.
He concluded, “It is only during now the NPP time that reforms are starting, we have started to ensure that as I said we have not appointed a single person in the last so many years that we’ve been there just to ensure that we are able to pay the employees.”
