A month after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee promised ₹5000 to the female head of every household in Goa each month, it has come to light that the Trinamool Congress-run-Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is unable to pay wages due to a financial crunch.
On Thursday (January 27) evening, KMC announced that it cannot pay pensions to employees who retired after September 2021. The civic body informed that it was untenable to cough up ₹50 crores of pension each month at a time when it had to pay ₹150 crores of salaries to current employees.
A notice by the civic body read, “Payments of pension and pensionary benefits (to the retired employees who have been superannuated from September 2021) are not currently released due to crisis of fund.” There are 22,000 permanent employees and 26,000 contractual employees working for the Kolkata Municipal Corporation.
Besides retired employees, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation did not pay salaries to its contract staff members and daily wage labourers for the past 8 months. Reportedly, KMC officials are unsure whether they could clear the dues of the unpaid workers or regularise the pension of the retired staff. “Right now, it is impossible when the financial situation will normalise. We are trying to solve the situation,” informed a senior civic body official.
Reportedly, revenues generated by KMC from property taxes have declined drastically in the past 2 years. As such, the civic body has resorted to stringent measures in bringing all untaxed assets and properties under the fold of taxation.
In a bid to tide over the financial crunch, Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim sought ₹700 crores from the West Bengal government and a ₹2000 crore loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Despite this, the financial health of the civic body is far from better. Even the TMC-run-State government had to borrow a whopping ₹6500 crore from the open market in three instalments in January 2022 alone.
On December 21, 2021, TMC swept the Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections, with the party winning 134 out of 144 seats. The BJP had won 3 seats, Left 2, Congress 2 while others won 3 seats each. In 2015, TMC had 114 seats, BJP had 7, Left parties had 15 while Congress and others had 5 and 3 seats respectively.
Mamata Banerjee lures voters in Goa with cash
Ahead of the upcoming elections in Goa, TMC had announced freebies to lure voters in the coastal State. It had promised an ambitious ‘Griha Laxmi scheme’ under which ₹5000 will be transferred to the bank account of the female head of every household each month. The scheme is targeted at a whopping 3.5 lakh families in Goa and will cost about ₹1500-2000 crores.
The scheme, which is yet to see the light of the day, is likely to constitute 6-8% of the State budget alone. Interestingly, a similar initiative by the name of ‘Laxmir Bhandar’ is underway in the State of West Bengal. However, the Mamata Banerjee government has so far been able to pay only ₹500 (general category) and ₹1000 (reserved category) to each household every month. The assured amount in Goa’s case has been kept at 5-10 times its achieved target in West Bengal.
TMC leader Mahua Moitra had claimed, “It is a very transformative scheme for the people of Goa. We’ve started the same scheme with great success in West Bengal. Griha Laxmi scheme is very easy to understand. It is a direct transfer scheme and the female head of every household will be receiving Rs 5,000 a month. It will be directly transferred to their bank account. To avail this scheme, one doesn’t have to be a part of any particular caste or community.”
While KMC has been unable to pay pension to its retired employees and has withheld the salaries of the contractual workers/ daily wage labourers, the financial mismanagement and administrative laxity of the Mamata Banerjee-run-government has become evident. For a party that is unable to put a civil body in order, its claims to roll out the ambitious scheme of ‘Griha Laxmi’ in Goa seems to be a far-fetched reality.
