DRDA office locked over non-payment of salary

Our Correspondent
Kohima, Feb. 20 (EMN): The District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), Kohima has been on a “cease-work” agitation since Feb. 6, 2019, for non-payment of employees’ salaries for the past seven months.

Despite the agency’s representations been made on Jan. 23 and Feb. 5 to the higher-ups of the Rural Development department, Kohima over non-payment of salary, “there was no response” from the directorate (department), claimed the DRDA staff.

The employees of DRDA told Eastern Mirror that they decided to call for a “total strike” after “the director refused” to meet them on Feb. 5, the day the second representation was submitted.

The staff had locked their respective rooms at the DRDA office building located in the DC’s complex, Kohima on Feb. 6 for the ‘safety of files, systems, and other documents.’ The employees said that the strike will continue until the authorities release their pending salaries or assure them of their salaries in writing with specific date.

“Nobody is willing to come to the office,” said DRDA employees.

It will be eight months without salaries for the DRDA staff by the end of February. The employees said that the strike was not revealed to the media as the authorities had requested them to wait until March this year. However, they are apprehensive as it’s not the first time that such a delay had happened. They said the department didn’t pay their salaries for 11 months in the past too – from June 2016 to April 2017.