Salary, pension of PAU employees delayed

About 5,500 employees and pensioners of Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) today threatened to gherao Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal over the delay in the payment of salary and pension for September.
"We, including teachers and non-teaching, staff have not received salary for the month of September till now," PAU Employees' Union President P S Gill said.
Similarly, pensioners have also not got their dues for September, he added.
The employees, who have been protesting under the banner of PAU Employees' Union for the last three days, warned to ghearo Chief Minister to protest against the "apathetic" attitude of the state government towards varsity employees.

Out of of total staff of 5,500, PAU has about 2,800 teachers and non-teachers while rest are pensioners.
Employees' union pointed out that the monthly budget for the payment of salaries and pension stood at about Rs 25 crore, which had not been disbursed by the Punjab government so far.

PAU Vice Chancellor Baldev Singh Dhillon said, "State's Finance department has assured us to release pay and pension as soon as possible. However, no timeframe has been given."
Not only current dues, employees also claimed that they had not got even the single instalment of pay arrears on account of revision of pay scales despite promised by the state government several times.

"State government employees have been given 70 per cent of their pay arrears whereas we have not been disbursed even one instalment of our arrears ," claimed Gill.
"We were told by Punjab Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa last December that the 40 per cent of pay arrears will be disbursed by March 2013. But till now, no dues were cleared," he said.