Hamirpur: Nothing may reveal the plight of the Himachal government’s finances more than the open acknowledgement of chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal that it was spending 42 percent of its budget just to meet out the salary and allowances of its employees.
The chief minister was addressing the 45th Raising Day of Non Gazetted Officers (NGO) Federation at Hamirpur, today.
He said that since 1 January, 2008 – when he took over as the chief minister in the present term as much as Rs 3419.45 crores had been disbursed as financial benefits to the employees.
Mentioning the difficulties created by the Finance Commission in undervaluing committed liabilities of the state, Dhumal said that Himachal was spending Rs 4,500 crore on salary, Rs 1,850 crore on pensions and Rs. 2,200 crore on interest payments on accumulated debt liability of the state.
Without considering the figures presented by the state, the commission valued our salary bill at Rs 3,600 crore, pensions at Rs 1,400 crore and interest payments at Rs 1,600 crore. An annual increase over the salary allowed was only 2 percent whereas 18 percent DA already stands approved by the centre.
Besides the wrongful valuation of the states committed liabilities, the central government in a discriminatory manner has also restricted borrowing limit at Rs 1,560 crore against its demand of Rs 1,731 crore for meeting the current plan targets, he added.
However, in praise of the employees the chief minister said that make a significant contribution towards the states development which has enabled it to be counted as the best state among the big states in the country by an survey of the reputed India Today media group.
It was a rare achievement that a small hilly state of the country was consistently achieving new heights in different sectors, said Dhumal.
In a departure from routine, Prem Singh Bharmouri, chairman NGO Federation present a cheque of Rs 2100 towards the CMs relief fund. This amount was saved out of the garlands and bouquets expenses that the federation was otherwise to spend for receiving the guests and the chief guest.
Besides various employee leaders, ID Dhiman – the education minister and Urmila Thakur MLA were present at the function.
Our leaders have raised army of employees in shadow of politics, to get votes of entire family if one gets a government job, who’s responsible ? Public or Politicians?
If 42% is spend on employees salaries alone, we can expect government’s capacity and sense of delivering quality lifestyle, health, education or other basic facilities to general public where there are no members availing government jobs and have no better sources of income.