Suhail Bhat
SRINAGAR, Jan 17: The city level technical experts engaged for the implementation of Housing For All (HFA) scheme are without salary for last ten months.
Nearly 68 experts including Project Engineers, Town Planners, GIS Specialists, Training Coordinators and others were without salaries for last ten months. Nearly 14 experts were engaged soon after the scheme was launched in 2015 and 54 more were engaged in 2017.
The housing scheme was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and aimed to construct about two crore houses in the country within 7 years. People who would be benefited through this scheme included homeless, poor urban people and belonging weaker sections of society. However, the delay in the salaries of experts was casting a shadow on the scheme.
The experts rued that the despite the availability of funds the Government was not releasing their salaries thereby plunging their families into starvation. “We are all trained professionals and have left lucrative jobs to serve our land but Government behavior has let us down. These degrees are useless if they cannot help us to feed our families,” an expert said, adding they were having tough time due to callous attitude of the state level technical experts.
He alleged that the State level technical experts lost interest in the cases of city level technical experts after getting approval for their plans. “After the central agencies approved their utilization certificate and capacity building plan, they lost interest. They did not pursue the cases of city level technical experts. Their approach was petty,” he said.
Jammu and Kashmir State Coordinator, Housing For All, Kapil Ghai, said that the delay in salaries was because of a clerical error in the plans and all pending salaries would be released within a week.
Meanwhile, the experts demanded a separate mission directorate for the effective implementation of the scheme. “We want a separate Mission Directorate on the pattern of other Centre sponsored schemes like MGNREGA, NHM etc.” they said.
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