Following the agitation launched by NSSATA over the non-release of pending salaries, the state finance department Friday clarified that the SSA teachers’ pay and allowances were paid from the mission authority and not from the state exchequer.
In a statement, secretary to the government of Nagaland, finance department (budget) Y. Kikheto Sema said that Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) was a mission mode programme being implemented in the state. Of the central flagship programmes, the requirements of manpower were mostly under SSA, RMSA and NRHM. In all the states, the employees under flagship programmes were on a mission mode.
Kikheto said following the creation of posts under SSA in Nagaland, the school education department was clearly advised that the salary of the SSA employees would be released only after the funds were received from the Centre (mission authority of SSA).
Accordingly, the finance department, from time to time, has been issuing directions to the treasuries for release of salaries only after the funds were received from the Centre and deposited to the state government account by the mission authority of SSA Nagaland.
The secretary said the procedure was followed not only for release of SSA salary but even for other government employees appointed under Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS) where the state government paid the salary only after funds were released by the Centre. Finance Department also keep advising the departments to pursue with the government of India for early release of the salary components to avoid delayed payment.
Kikheto said the issue of non-release of SSA salary was not only unique to Nagaland but similar problems were being faced in other states like Jammu & Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh.
He pointed out that due to the normative approach adopted by the 13th Finance Commission (FC), all the special category states, including Nagaland were facing huge resource constraints.
The short assessment of non-plan revenue deficits by the 13th FC on account of salary and pensions was about Rs. 6312.86 crores, while the net loss of Power and NST was about Rs. 1111.21 crores; totalling to about Rs. 7242.41 crores.
With this kind of normative funding, many special category states were finding it difficult to pay even normal salary to its employees, particularly in states where there are huge number of employees like Nagaland, said Kikheto.
He hoped that the 14th Finance Commission (FC) would cater to the problems of the non-plan revenue deficit gap created by the 13th FC.
Deposit of Rs. 23.00 crores by the state mission authority of the SSA to the state government account was made recently and as per the DDO-wise sub-allocation (DDO=Drawing and Disbursing Officer) submitted by the school education department, finance department have issued directions to the treasuries through an order dated May 1, 2014 to honour the salaries of the SSA teachers for 3 months i.e. with effect from December 2013 to February 2014.
Kikheto hoped that the above facts would clear all unfounded doubts and misgivings pertaining to the delay in release of SSA salaries for the period from December 2013 to February 2014.
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