A group of Jiban Sevaks, employees at different panchayat offices in South Dinajpur district today met the PWD Karmadhyaksha of the South Dinajpur Zilla Parishad, Mofijuddin Miya, and requested him to resume their monthly payment.

The employees have said that the remuneration of 32 such Jiban Sevak workers in the district has been suspended since last April. They were engaged in the year 2009 and were deployed in different panchayats.

“These employees are well known as Jiban Sebaks since 2009, but they are in financial crisis now due to the sudden non-payment of their salary,” a source said today. The employees said they had earlier served memorandums to the Sabhadhipati of the Zilla Parishad, the District  Magistrate and officials of the panchayat offices, but in vain.

According to official sources, there are 911 people working in the same post across West Bengal, and the salary for all of them has been stopped now. At the panchayat level, these employees were engaged in various fields such as birth and death registration, residential certificates, Bengal housing scheme and even government projects in different departments.

“We were appointed in the year 2009 through a written test and interview. A total of 36 candidates were engaged in South Dinajpur. Later, four of them resigned. There was no problem in our working procedure, but due to changes
in the government order for fund release, there was no provision for our salary. So it has been stopped. We are in big financial crisis. We have informed the district level officers but without results, said one of the employees, Utpal Majumdar.

The Karmadhyakshya of the PWD at the ZP, Mofijuddin Miya, said, “It is a technical problem, they were being paid from the 14th Finance. Recently, the government order has been changed and we cannot pay them from this fund. We have talked with officials and are trying to contact state officials. We hope this problem will be solved soon.”

Various other project livelihood workers are also engaged at the panchayat level in the last few years, and Mr Miya said that he would talk to the higher authorities about this and expedite the introduction of honorarium for the
workers.