Jesse Ramdeo

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has at­trib­uted de­lays in salary pay­ments for some pub­lic ser­vants and state em­ploy­ees to on­go­ing gov­ern­ment min­istry re­align­ments that took ef­fect at the start of Oc­to­ber, and says af­fect­ed of­fi­cers will be paid by Mon­day.

“The process in­volved sev­er­al steps, in­clud­ing the trans­fer of per­son­nel, bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions and re­lat­ed ad­min­is­tra­tive sys­tems be­tween min­istries. Spe­cif­ic pay­roll and ac­count­ing process­es re­quired ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion to en­sure the ac­cu­ra­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty of fund dis­burse­ments.”

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Fri­day, Tan­coo as­sured that out­stand­ing salaries will be paid by Mon­day, No­vem­ber 3.

“Un­til em­ploy­ees un­der the re­align­ment are trans­ferred to their new­ly as­signed min­istries, salaries will be paid and funds as­signed via a hy­brid process of an IHRIS sys­tem and a man­u­al sys­tem. The Min­istry of Fi­nance, through the Comp­trol­ler of Ac­counts, is work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly with the rel­e­vant line min­istries, agen­cies and banks to fi­nalise the nec­es­sary ad­just­ments and en­sure the af­fect­ed of­fi­cers are paid by Mon­day, No­vem­ber 3. This is a nor­mal prac­tice with re­align­ment is­sues.”

He said the de­lay af­fect­ed a lim­it­ed num­ber of em­ploy­ees and stemmed from ad­min­is­tra­tive ad­just­ments fol­low­ing the re­struc­tur­ing of sev­er­al gov­ern­ment min­istries.

“The af­fect­ed min­istries are Land and Le­gal Af­fairs, the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Min­istry of Jus­tice, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, and the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs.”