SHILLONG, June 17 – Meghalaya Government on Wednesday admitted in the Assembly that employees of the State Cooperative Marketing and Consumer Federation Ltd (Mecofed) were not getting salaries for the last seven months.
Cooperation Minister Charles Pyngrope said in reply to BJP member AL Hek’s question that the salary was not paid to them as there was a ‘huge difference’ between the monthly income and expenditure of the Mecofed. He said Mecofed was supposed to generate its own funds for paying salaries, but the huge gap between its income and expenditure was the reason of the backlog in salary disbursement.
“Unless we receive funds, it is difficult to pay salary,” Pyngrope said to a supplementary question of HEK who sought to know from when the salary would be restored. In another question of HEP, the General Administration Department (GAD) minister, HDR Lyngdoh, said the Meghalaya House at Vellore in Tamil Nadu was ‘partially functional’.