Salaries at Ernakulam Medical College yet to be distributed

Kochi: The distribution of salaries of the 900 odd staff members at Ernakulam Medical College(EMC), has been facing incessant delays due to problems of integration, despite a fortnight having elapsed on Tuesday.

Despite the college undergoing a government take over years ago from the Co-operative Academy for Professional Education (CAPE), the staff of the institution are yet to be technically absorbed into government service.

The college staff cite this to be the reason for the irregularity in the distribution of their salaries, unlike other government departments and government medical colleges.

“A total of 350 permanent staff under CAPE has been absorbed into the government service through a government order some time ago, but the concurrence of PSC to their posting is yet to come because of which they have not been allotted PEN (Permanent Employee Number) which is used in the SPARK software for distribution of salary. This is hitting proper salary distribution,” said a medical college employee.

The salary could have been distributed by the 5th in the past two months, however, the staff member added “every time in the absence of PEN, the accounts staff manning SPARK have to enter all other details of an employee instead of just entering PEN to process the salary. This is consuming considerable time because of which the whole process gets delayed. Moreover, the entries of 350 odd contract and daily wage staff have also to be done in a different manner. Past two months they started it early and this month, it seems they have delayed it. Anyway we are worried as 10th of the month is the deadline for payment of loan instalment and house rents,” he added.

EMC Principal, Dr V K Sreekala citing reasons for the delay in salary said though the salary bills were submitted to the treasury on Saturday the delay could be due to the delay there reports Deccan Chronicle.