Morung Express News
Kohima | May 24
The District Rural Development Agencies (DRDA) employees in Nagaland have been working without any salaries for more than eight months now. On May 24, representatives from the 11 districts arrived at the Rural Development Directorate to submit a representation requesting the department to release the pending salaries on or before May 31.
The DRDA staff in Nagaland comprises of more than 300 employees, and over the last eight months, the entire staff from the Project Director to the office peon has been deprived of their salaries.
The duration of non-payment of salaries varies from district to district. For the DRDA staff of Longleng, it has been a year since they were deprived of their salaries. On the other hand, DRDA officers in Dimapur have not received their salaries for one year and two months. “I have stopped going to office for the last six months. No pay, no work,” said a DRDA employee at Kiphire.
While some have stopped attending office, majority of the employees continue to go to office and offer their services despite the Government’s failure to provide their salaries. The reason, according to some of the employees, for the non-payment of salaries has been due to the State’s failure to provide it’s 10 per cent share.
Earlier on September 9, 2015, the employees submitted a representation. “They said they will look into the matter but we didn’t get any response,” the employees lamented.
“We are taking loans to survive. For those who are staying in rented houses, they have been chased out of their homes,” said Kepingtad Newmai, JE, DRDA Kohima. Another employee mentioned how they have to pay their children’s admission on credit.
The recent representation demanded that if the department is unable to resolve the salary issue on or before May 31, the department should “revert all the DRDA employees supposed to be in foreign service back to the parent department in a rational way.” Failing which, it cautioned that the employees may be compelled to resort to agitation or strike.
