Sports Dept employee’s suicide prompts UT to streamline salary disbursal system

Deepankar Sharda

Chandigarh, June 15

If media reports or repeated request by victims could not make officials realise the importance of releasing salaries on time to the Sports Department employees, who have been hired through outsourcing, a loss of precious life recently may probably do.

One-month salary released

Meanwhile, the employees claimed to have received one-month salary on Saturday. While they were expecting full payment of their dues, they only got salary for one month. “We have received a month’s salary on Saturday. We have been asked to wait for the other month’s salary,” confirmed an employee.

On June 11, an attendant at the Sector 38 Sports Complex allegedly committed suicide by hanging at his residence. The victim, Mahinder Singh, was allegedly suffering from depression after not getting salary for the past two months. He was working on an outsourcing basis and had been facing financial crisis. Mahinder’s wife is working under the same scheme, and she too has not got her salary. The couple was awaiting their salaries to pay a monthly installment of around Rs 10,000 of their home loan.

Mahinder was not the only one to face such humiliation, there are hundreds of employees working under the Sports Department, who are awaiting their salaries, which are nominal, for two months now. Notably, it is not for the first time that salaries of Sports Department employees have been delayed. The recent delay is fourth in the past one year.

After Mahinder succumbed to the financial pressure, the UT Administration is said to have asked officials to ‘solve the matter’ and find ways to issue salaries directly into the bank accounts of employees.

“A meeting was held recently where the UT Adviser discussed the matter. Not only the employees of the Sports Department, but those of other departments are facing the same issue. There have been unconfirmed reports that while hiring employees under this scheme, the contractor also charges ‘commission’ from them. A similar scam was recently reported from the UT Education Department,” said a highly-placed source, who also confirmed that the Chandigarh Administration was now planning to streamline the process of releasing salaries.

The (sports) department releases the salary amount to a designated contractor (service provider), who further disburses it to the employees. In April, a new contractor was selected for the work. Sources said the contractor refused to run the operations, citing previous liabilities.

As per a letter dated May 25, 2022, issued by the Superintendent, Personnel, for the Secretary, Personnel, Chandigarh Administration, the wages of the persons engaged on contract basis through outsource are to be disbursed by the seventh of every month by the contractor or service provider.

Meanwhile, the Panjab University Workers Union yesterday staged a protest demanding justice for the contractual worker, who committed suicide.