Chizokho Vero
December 12
KOHIMA (MExN): Out of Nagaland‘s annual budget of around Rs 2000 crore, around 60 percent goes to government servants as salaries, pensions and other facilities. Chief minister Neiphiu Rio today told the 33rd General Conference of the Nagaland Civil Service Association here that after subtracting debt servicing which accounts for about 18 per cent, the amount that goes to the public in the form of development expenditures is only around 22 per cent of the budget.
“This means that the government servants, constituting around 10 per cent of the population, consumes as much as 60 percent of the state budget whereas 90 per cent of the people have to share 22 per cent of the budget amongst themselves,” Rio said.
He admitted that even out of this development expenditure, a sizable portion is likely to be pocketed by government servants and public leaders. “Let us, therefore, examine if the state government is becoming more and more for the government servants and less and less for the people,” Rio said and pointed out that many of the government servants did not consider themselves to be public servants. They neither stay in their place of posting, nor bother to apply for leave, while they continue to draw their salaries regularly, Rio argued.
At the time of retiring, Rio said, they again encash as much as 300 days or ten months of earned leave, which have not been actually earned in many cases. When they are unable to attend their work for months, or even years, they continue to receive their full salary while the government reimburses all their medical expenses as well.
“But when the public, for whom the government is supposed to exist, fall sick, the government is hardly able to take care of them, Rio said. “Cannot some of the NCS officers posted in the outposts take it as an opportunity to see that development expenditures actually reach the people for whom it is meant, and is not misused or diverted?” Rio questioned. Rio wanted the government employees to realize that Nagaland is a poor state with insufficient revenue to run for even more than two months, leave alone development expenditures.
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