Mumbai: A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led local body in Maharashtra has decided to slash salaries of employees who fail to take care of their ageing parents.
The general body of the Zilla Parishad of Latur district Tuesday passed a proposal to cut 30 per cent salaries of all employees found to be neglecting their parents. The Zilla Parishad said the money will be directly given to the parents instead.
The move comes after complaints about employees ill-treating their parents were brought to the notice of the local body authorities.
BJP’s Rahul Kendre, president of the Zilla Parishad, told ThePrint: “We had orally received complaints about our employees not looking after their parents, sending them to old age homes, daughters-in-law not treating parents well. So, we decided to make this a rule. I am not sure about this, but I think we must be the first administrative body to implement such a decision.”
He added members of other political parties, including the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and the Shiv Sena, also supported the proposal, which was passed unanimously.
The 58-member Zilla Parishad has 37 members of the BJP. NCP member Manchakrao Patil had put forward the proposal initially.
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Committee to carry out ‘secret survey’
Kendre said the Zilla Parishad will form a committee under the chairmanship of the local body’s chief executive officer, Abhinav Goyal, to implement the decision. The committee will include heads of the Zilla Parishad’s various departments as well as four general body members.
“Through the committee, we will do a secret survey of our employees to get information about how their parents are being treated and find cases. We have already had oral complaints about some Zilla Parishad teachers neglecting their parents, so we can start with finding out more about those,” Kendre said.
The Zilla Parishad will first implement its decision for the 5,500 teachers on its payroll and then extend it to other departments. Overall, the Latur Zilla Parishad has more than 12,500 employees across its 14 departments.
“We are also widely publicising our decision right now with the help of our own local officers, local journalists and social workers, so that parents come to know that they have this option, and can start giving us written complaints about their children,” Kendre said, adding the Zilla Parishad hopes to start implementing the decision after Diwali.
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