MP Govt Probes Non-Payment of Salaries To 50,000 Employees

Bhopal: As many as 50,000 employees of the Madhya Pradesh government have not been paid salaries for the past six months despite having employees’ codes.

This has given rise to the suspicion that bogus employees may have entered into the payroll of the state government.

The Commissioner of Treasury and Accounts (CAT), functioning under the state finance department, has ordered a probe into it, sources said.

The issue came to light when the state-level finance intelligence cell (SFIC), functioning under the CAT, has recently found that salaries of nearly 50,000 employees have not been drawn through the treasury software in the past four months.

This led the CAT to direct the drawing and disbursing officers (DDOs) to probe the matter, sources said on Saturday.

In a statement issued here, the finance department explained that verification of data for both regular and non-regular employees is a ‘continuous process’, conducted through the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) software.

The treasury and disbursing officers have been asked by the CAT, as a routine affair, from time to time to ensure confirmation of the authenticity of the employees’ codes through official correspondence, sources said.

‘It is a routine affair for the SFIC to regularly analyze the data from the treasuries and monitor the salary disbursement’, a senior officer of the state finance department said, unwilling to be quoted.

The SFIC has recently noticed during the scrutiny of the employees’ records that nearly 50,000 employees have not drawn salaries through the software for the last four months, leading the CAT to order a probe into the matter, the officer said.

They included 40,000 regular and 10,000 non-regular employees, and all these employees have employees’ code, sources said.

It has been made mandatory for the drawing and disbursing officers to verify employees’ data in such particular cases, sources said.

During a recent review exercise, it has been found that there are employees with valid employees’ codes whose retirement dates have not been entered and the exit process in the IFMIS has not been completed, but still they have not withdrawn salaries for the past four months, sources said.

Sources said this may also happen that employees' data may not have been updated in the treasury software due to some reasons.

However, a probe can unearth if any irregularity has been committed, sources said.

The DDos have been asked by the treasury officers to assign the reason for withholding the salaries of these employees, sources added.