Fourteen staff members of the Government Mental Health Centre at Oolampara in the capital have not been paid their salaries for the past 11 months due to funding issues owing to COVID-19 outbreak. According to sources at the centre, the salaries of the employees, including security staff and cooks, were last paid in May 2021.
"Salary payments had been delayed in the past too, but this is the longest gap yet. After the COVID-19 outbreak, six months of pending salaries were paid from the Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund (CMDRF). Now, it has become 11 months. It is hard to make ends meet as most of us have pending loans. I faced a revenue recovery order. One of the doctors here helped me repay the amount," says Prem Pradeep, a security staff.
The salaries for the security staff and the cooks are paid by the Hospital Development Committee (HDC). The main revenue for the HDC used to be the fees collected from nursing students during their month-long training programme at the centre. After the COVID-19 outbreak, the training programmes stopped, cutting off the funds.
