FM blames technical glitch for salary delay

Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 6

Defending the delay in releasing the salary of state government employees, Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal today said despite the financial constraints, the state had not made any deductions in the salaries of its employees, and had ensured that it was disbursed on time.

He said, “Amid pandemic, many states had deducted salaries of their employees, but we never resorted to any such measures.”

On being asked about the delay in releasing salaries, he said, “The salaries were delayed on a few occasions due to technical reasons. When we switched over from the TCS to the NIC software — the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) — for approval and disbursal of salary, there was a technical glitch, which caused the delay. Also, the salary of a certain department was withheld on some occasions, which resulted in the delay as they had failed to provide us the details of employees.”

However, Davinder Singh Punia, state president, Democratic Teachers’ Front, said, “On an average, the salary has been delayed for two to five days for teaching and non-teaching staff since October.”

Meanwhile, highlighting various reforms undertaken by the Finance Department, Manpreet said the state had not gone into overdraft for even a single day in the current financial year. The state remained in overdraft for 179 days in 2016-17, 100 days in 2017-18, 63 days in 2018-19 and 47 days in 2019-20. There had been interest saving of nearly Rs 10.75 crore in 2017-18, Rs 21.7 crore in 2018-19 and Rs 5 crore in 2019-20.

The present government took over at the time when the RBI had shut down the state treasury, that too at the end of financial year from March 29, 2017, to March 31, 2018, he added. The government avails immediate cash from the RBI at the existing repo rate under the Ways and Means Advances (WMA) facility. However, it has to return it within 90 days. If the WMA exceeds 90 days, it is treated as overdraft.

He said the department manually built its own cash forecasting methodology for better management of state finances. The state had started investing in the consolidated sinking fund to pre-emptively mitigate the rollover risk or reinvestment risk, he said.