Palanpur civic employees denied salaries

Palanpur, Nov 28 (UNI) Temporary employees at the Palanpur Municipality have not received their salaries for the past 17 months and now face retrenchment.

The employees on retrenchment list have threatened to drag the civic body to court for their salaries.

The civic body proposes to terminate the services of 218 temporary employees and 28 such employees have already been served with termination notices.

Acting president Ibrahim Malek said, ''The civic body has been paying Rs 42 lakh towards salaries every month. But the government grant is a meagre Rs 17 lakh.

Malek claimed that presently, 218 employees were surplus out of the total of 622 employees.

The Congress-dominated civic body has been criticised for its laxity in collecting taxes and failing to punish economic offenders leading to revenue loss running into crores of rupees every year.

Chief Officer Tilak Shastri however, claimed that the main reason for the deteriorating financial condition of the civic body was due to the large sums of money being spent on electricity, Dharoi water supplies and other unplanned expenditure.

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