Govt paid Rs 78.61 lakh in salaries, allowances in June
PANAJI
Nearly 200 people working in multiple capacities from office assistants to officers on special duty (OSDs) in the offices of cabinet ministers are costing the State exchequer nearly Rs 80 lakh per month.
The lowest paid among these personnel, peons (MTS), draw as much as Rs 30,000 per month while at the top end, an OSD with a whopping Rs 2.80 lakh is the highest paid among these 200 personnel.
In the month of June this year, the government spent Rs 78.61 lakh on the salaries and allowances of 192 of these personal staff working to keep the offices of the cabinet ministers running.
Five others were not paid their dues in June because their documentation, including medical fitness and verification of past antecedents have still not been submitted. Also, one person is working pro-bono.
Most of these personnel are private individuals picked personally by the ministers themselves to serve as OSDs, secretaries, joint secretaries, private secretaries, advisors, public relations officers, office assistants, stenographers and peons (MTS). Their tenures are co-terminus with those of the ministers. A handful of them are public servants picked by the ministers to serve on deputation in their offices and will repatriate to their parent departments when their boss ceases to be minister.
The Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) is manned by 33 personnel, including the CM’s joint secretary, Tushar Joshi, who is on deputation from the government of Gujarat, six OSDs, three additional private secretaries and three PROs among others.
Health Minister Vishwajit Rane’s office has two OSDs – Andrea Marques and former health director Dr Rajnanda Desai. In June, Marques was paid Rs 1.16-odd lakh while Desai was paid Rs 2.43-lakh in salary and allowances.
Transport and Industries Minister Mavin Godinho’s office has one OSD, Ethel Nunes, whose June salary and allowances was pegged at Rs 1.34 lakh.
Also working with solitary OSDs are the offices of Agriculture Minister Ravi Naik and PWD Minister Nilesh Cabral. Sachit Parsekar and Lyndon Monteiro who are the OSDs to Naik and Cabral respectively, drew an identical Rs 1.13 lakh in emoluments in June.
The office of the Tourism Minister Rohan Khaunte has two OSDs – Neville Noronha and Shawn Mendes. Both have drawn salary and allowances of Rs 1.16-odd lakh in June.
Art and Culture Minister Govind Gaude’s OSD Ashwin Gomes’ perks amounted to Rs 1.30-odd lakh while the pay of Revenue Minister Babush Monserrate’s OSD Nidha Syed was Rs 1.16 lakh.
Fisheries Minister Nilkanth Halrnakar again has two OSDs in his office – Prathamesh Tulsakar and Rohan Naik – and both got paid an identical Rs 1.16-odd lakh in June.
Social Welfare Minister Subhash Phaldesai’s OSD Pramod Desai has a salary of Rs 91,762 and WRD Minister Subhash Shirodkar’s OSD Jagannath Chiri got paid Rs 84,132 in June.
Meanwhile, personal staff in the offices of the chairpersons of nine State-owned corporations and autonomous bodies costs approximately Rs 11.13 lakh. There are 40 such people appointed in their offices by the Corporation chairpersons usually MLAs.
