New Delhi: Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena has approved the release of grant-in-aid to Delhi Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation (DSFDC) for payment of salaries to the staff of the corporation, pending since January last year, a Raj Niwas statement said on Tuesday. The approval was given on Monday.
The lieutenant governor has also asked the government to come up with a concrete revival plan of the now-defunct corporation, it said. Clearing the proposal, he slammed the AAP government for the current state-of-affairs at the once robust corporation that offered financial assistance to entrepreneurs from the most marginalised SC/ST/OBC/minorities and physically disabled people, it added.
"I am more than surprised to note that the DSFDC, meant to provide financial assistance SC/ST/OBC/minorities and disabled persons and provide the target group with support for their economic upliftment, itself does not have money to pay salaries to its employees pending since January, 2024," Saxena said.
The lieutenant governor said the corporation does not even have a corpus of its own and has been running on income from FDRs and rents from its properties. The employees of the corporation were forced to make several representations to me and approach the High Court for getting their salaries, he added.
Saxena said it is even more disturbing that like in so many other cases, it took the Delhi High Court to pass an order holding the Delhi government responsible for the state of affairs and directing it to pay the salaries.
"I have gone through the facts on file with regards to the corporation and its decline over the past decade or so underline the story of utter neglect and wilful misgovernance in a government undertaking meant to help the most marginalised sections of the society, viz. SC/ST/OBC/Minorities and disabled people," he added.
The fund availability and the financial health of DSFDC was robust till the year 2011-2012, with the income of the corporation being much more than its expenditure. However, the present income is reported to be just Rs 5.61 crore against an annual expenditure of Rs 17 crore (approx), Saxena claimed in the statement.
