Tura(Meghalaya), June 9: The Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) has been a mess for close to a decade now with finances at record lows and anger at a record high. The situation has been such that the institution now is literally on the verge of collapsing on itself, needing a miracle to set things right.
Till just about a year ago, the GHADC had close to 2400 employees, a mind boggling number for an institute that squandered most of its revenue. The situation however was not the same for the GHADC with a robust flow of revenue filling its coffers till the ban on coal upset the calculations.
It was however the greed of some of its leaders themselves that has led to the GHADC currently being in a state that it is now.
According to Council sources, the GHADC in the year 2009 had only about 715 employees and a new EC led by the NCP, which quickly turned to the Congress in the absence of an anti defection law. The salary requirement, as per estimates, was about Rs 1.17 crore in 2009. Initially being led by PK Sangma, the Council apparently hired about 200 employees. His successor, AA Sangma went a few notches higher and in about 3 years, another 700 employees were added to the GHADC.
The numbers continued to be added in the periods of the next few ECs as well and finally brought the figure close to 2400.
With the new hires, the total salary requirements reached close to Rs 4 crores. Whether all these new hires were genuine or even had the qualifications has never been found out.
“The number of employees is double the requirement and this has burdened the finances of the Council. This non required recruitment led to the Council not being able to meet the salary needs through its own finances and required support from the state’s disbursement,” said a former MDC who did not want to be named.
He added that the last EC led by Dipul Marak was provided Rs 42 crores from the state and was able to clear a total of 16 month’s salary after making adjustments from a period of 28 months. In fact, there have been allegations of manipulations done by the state with no statement of taxes received, either from DMR or MV being provided to the GHADC.
“There is no revenue receipt statement given by the state which leaves room for manipulation by the state,” he added.
In a nutshell, the GHADC has 3 sources of revenue, one coming from the centre, another from the state through revenue sharing agreements and lastly through its own tax collection.
A recent statement by the chief minister, Conrad Sangma, shows the malaise suffered by the GHADC and why no serious action may ever be taken to adjust revenue or corruption issues. The CM had stated that through reforms made in the GHADC, the total number of employees in the Council had been reduced by 700!
The statement is significant for two aspects, firstly that there were so many ‘ghost’ employees within the GHADC and more alarmingly because there was no talk of any action against such blatant corruption.
“There should have been an investigation as to how so many ghost employees were among the rolls and who was their ‘salary’ going to. Strict action should have been taken against those responsible but the matter was side stepped to show reforms brought about,” added the former MDC.
The GHADC also suffers from the fact there are no service rules or finance rules meaning that some employees can continue getting extensions on their service. In fact there are some employees who have been continuing on extensions for close to 7 years and may be dead before they retire.
Many are now of the opinion that the ADCs should be the responsibility of the state government after para 12 was scrapped to make way for para 12 (A) of the NE Reorganization Act, 1971, after Meghalaya became a full fledged state.
“All the bills, funds and communications are being screened and monitored by the DCA department of the state. So who else should be responsible for the ADCs of not the state,” felt the former MDC.
