Daily Times

KARACHI: Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) has been unable to pay salaries to its 13,796 employees before Eid.

According to KMC officials, KMC faced Rs 300 million revenue shortfall in eleven months of financial year 2017-18.

Past Sindh government had to pay Rs 13 billion on head of octrio zila tax special grant but KMC only received Rs 7.83 billion. By the end of May 2018, there was a shortfall of Rs 5.25 billion (34.79 percent)

The officials said that the retired employees and pensioners were also deprived of their salaries right before Eid-ul-Fitr.

Meanwhile, matching grant from government in lieu of Octori (Rs 159.140 million per month), KMC received 1.56 billion in FY 2017-18 with a shortfall of Rs 1.49 billion.

Grant-in Aid from government in lieu of grant aid was Rs 300 million per month and additional grant amounted to Rs 130 million for FY 2017-18. This totaled to Rs 3.91 billion but KMC received only Rs 1.59 billion.

Out of the Special Grant in Aid from the government amounting to Rs 700 million, only Rs 150 million was paid to KMC indicating a shortfall of 86.51 percent.

Special Grant in Aid for the pensioners of DMCs was Rs 215.489 million per month but KMC received only Rs 30 million. The total budget target stood at Rs 3.03 billion.

The Mayor of Karachi Waseem Akhtar while highlighting the core issues remarked that the civic entity had been facing hardships to meet salaries and pension matters of employees.

He also requested enhancement of Rs 300 million per month to KMC in order to bail out KMC from dire financial crunch.

Due to short release of OZT share and grant in aid to KMC against its actual establishment expenditure, KMC had been only managing paying employees’ salary on net basis and due to this it remained unable to remit pension fund, provident fund and group insurance contributions up to Rs 631.71 million with effect from July 2016 to June 2017.

KMC has been facing financial crunch due to less payment and a number of development projects of KMC has taken up.

Projects include roads buildings, bridges, roads connected works, maintenance, repairs and improvement of roads, bridges, culverts, causeways and ancillary bridges.

Published in Daily Times, June 12^th 2018.