It has been around six days into September and the Punjab government is yet to provide salaries to its government employees.
According to the norms, the salary for the previous month is paid on the first of every month. From the time this news has come to the fore, the government defended itself by saying that they had been facing a fund crunch since the GST compensation came to end. Reportedly, the state got GST compensation of Rs. 16,000 crores from the Centre in the previous year.
Every government employee be it a high official bureaucrat or a 4th class employee, each person is waiting for their salary to be credited. Officials have been defending themselves by saying that this is the first time that a problem like this has sprung up since the time AAP has come to power.
Since the time this news has come to the fore, many opposition leaders have taken a dig at the ruling party.
The Union Law Minister, Rijiju, hit out at Kejriwal saying that they have promised to make India number 1, but what have they done to Punjab in 6 months? He further added before trying to take India to the top, pay the salaries of the employees.
Manjinder Singh Sira, MLA also tweeted and said that after spending all the revenue of Punjab on worthless things, now the government is left with no funds to pay to its employees.
After all the criticism, the finance minister of Punjab, Harpal Singh Cheema came to the front and assured that the state government will provide salaries to all its employees by the end of the day. He stated that as 9,000 employees were made permanent by the government, that process resulted in a delay in giving out of the salaries to the people.
Indian Economist, SS Johal also commented on the situation saying that the freebies that the state is providing to the people are not well thought out. He said, “the government is providing free services by taking loans from the state which is making India fall into a debt trap. Instead of this, they should use the loan money to do some investment and create job opportunities for the people of Punjab.” He also claimed that now the AAP government might again have to take a loan from the Centre to pay salaries to its employees which will make Punjab debt-ridden.
Now, the CM of Punjab, Bhagwant Mann said that the salaries of all the employees will be credited by today evening under all circumstances.