Bali urges health employees to suspend agitation, resume duties forthwith

Rs 51.50 cr corpus being created for permanent solution

SRINAGAR: Minister for Health & Medical Education, Bali Bhagat today said that the Government is seriously considering resolving the issue of regular disbursement of salaries to the employees of Family Welfare Department, who are agitating for the same for the past some time.

To address this technical issue once for all, the matter has been taken up with the Finance Department, who in turn has agreed in principal to make a provision of Rs. 51.50 crore for creating a corpus by the Department of Health & Medical Education for timely disbursement of salaries to the employees of Family Welfare Department under the Central Sponsored Scheme. The mechanism is aimed at to delink from Centre flow of funds and cover the mismatch in flows from the Centre to ensure regular salary disbursement to such employees. The Finance Department is likely to release the funds within next couple of days, which will enable the Department to release the pending salaries of the employees, said the Minister.

Mr. Bhagat said that Government was aware about the difficulties being faced by the employees of Family Welfare in absence of their salaries, but it was a technical issue, which needed a rigorous exercise, and now the matter stands almost resolved permanently. Now onwards, they will get the salaries regularly without waiting for the funds from the Centre as the corpus will be utilized for the purpose and adjusted later when they are received in normal course. He said an amount of Rs. 40 crore was released on his intervention by the Centre and 75 per cent payments were made. He has also appealed the employees to suspend their agitation and return to their duties immediately as the Government assures to release their pending salaries within a week’s time.