E-treasury delays salary: Employees

KOLLAM: There are widespread complaints over the disbursal of salaries to government employees through the e-treasury facility. Several employees working with taluk  and block offices across the state have alleged that there was over two-weeks’ delay in getting their salaries.  Under the e-treasury facility, the office heads have to submit the salary bills of their departments concerned.  The bills forwarded from the local offices to the sub- treasury are sanctioned through online transaction with the permission of the district treasury and treasury director. The salary is disbursed to the employees through registered bank accounts, which has now been hindered due to “technical issues.”

“Normally,  under the e-treasury system, there is no need to submit the salary bills manually. Earlier, we used to buy pay order cheque  from the treasury and submit it to the bank. Now the money is directly credited  to the banks by the treasury avoiding cheques,” an employee with the Changanassery taluk office told DC. “We submitted written complaints to the  RBI  and the salaries were disbursed  two weeks after  the salary date ,” the employee added.

The delay in salary distribution, though the online proceedings were cleared by the treasury on time, has been termed  “technical” by the bank authorities.  The employees were given flimsy reasons,  including blaming the account deposit limit set in the zero balance ‘Janapriya’ accounts. The salary was not given even after the banks raised the account limits from Rs 50,000  set for  basic savings bank deposit accounts with the SBT. Such accounts also have limitations, including restriction on withdrawing Rs 10,000 at a time, the employees alleged.