Nishikant Khajuria
JAMMU, June 9: Due to a vicious cycle of pending liabilities and delay in delinking the disbursement of salary from the source of Central Sponsored funding scheme despite an announcement for the same by Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu in his budget speech for this year, the Female Multipurpose Health Workers (FMPHWs) in the Family Welfare Department of Jammu and Kashmir are without salary for months together and hence suffering immensely.
Despite being permanent employees of the State Government, who were recruited through Services Selection Board as per established procedure, these FMPHWs are not getting regulary salary for the last several months and thus taking to street for the last 26 consecutive days as the Government apparently turned a deaf ear towards their repeated appeals and series of token protests across the State.
No salary since months to these FMPHWs has led to multiple problems for them, ranging from denial of admission to their wards in suitable institutes and even family feuds in some cases. Acute stress because of no salary can be gauged from the fact that two of the FMPHWs suffered miscarriage while a few others are being subjected to strange questioning by their in-laws. Some of these employees are suffering from life consuming diseases but are not able to undergo the treatment and meet daily expenses due to lack of money.
Even as these FMPHWs are regular employees of the State Government, who were recruited through Services Selection Board like other State Government employees and have been rendering round the clock services in the Health Department, they are not getting regular salary for the last few years after Central Government adopted funding of the Family Welfare Schemes in Jammu and Kashmir, like other States.
The gap between actual amount required for salary component and the funds released by the Central Government for the same led to irregularity in timely release of monthly salary of these FMPHWs and according to the official sources, diversion of Central funds was another reason for this gap.
With the passage of time, this gap started increasing and presently the requirement is almost double than the funds released by the Central Government for salary component. The Central Government releases around Rs 11 crores each quarter of the year for advance salary of these FMPHWs, whose number is around 1700 whereas the actual requirement for the same is almost double of this amount, sources explained while elaborating about the reason for increasing gap.
Though the expenditures incurred by the State Government in excess of grants released by Government of India, is reimbursed to the State as ‘Arrears’ after Utilization Certificate is deposited, the vicious cycle of liabilities continues because of time consuming process involved in preparing UCs, which need to be duly certified by the State Auditor General, for the reimbursement.
For a permanent solution of this crisis, which is also prevalent in SSA, RMSA, NHM and other Centrally Sponsored Schemes, State Finance Minister Dr Haseeb Drabu, in his last budget speech on floor of the House, had announced to delink the disbursement of salary from the source of funding of salary in respect of all Centrally Sponsored Schemes.
Following this announcement, Accounts Officer (Budget), Finance Depart-ment, also issued a formal order in this regard; OM No. FD-VII-Gen (111)2004-05-11, dated 31-01-2017, to the Secretary Revenue, Finance Department, for initiating required necessary action by the Resource Division for advance positioning of salary budget in respect of all such schemes through extant arrangements.
However, there was little progress in this regard afterwards as a possible liquidity stress on the State exchequer because of advance positioning of salary budget, approximately Rs 1000 crores, did not encourage the Government to move ahead over the matter.
The Department of Health is equally responsible for no progress on this as the Minister concerned and officers at the helm of affairs never bothered to explain difference between the employees under other Centrally Sponsored Schemes and these FMPHWs, who are regular State Government employees and only Rs 43 crores advance positioning is annually required for their regular salary.
When contacted, Commissioner/Secretary Health and Medical Education Department, Dr Pawan Kotwal told the Excelsior that the matter has been almost sorted out and Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu, during a meeting yesterday, issued necessary directions for clearing pendency and advance provisioning of the budget for regular salary to these FMPHWs.
He further informed that Rs 12.93 crores are required for clearing the pending salary upto last financial year while total Rs 83 crores are required for salary component for this year. “Rs 11 crores have been released by the Centre for the first quarter of this year while the State Government will provide the remaining Rs 72 crores, which will be re-imbursed by the Central Government,” he added.
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