Sariakandi municipality staff deprived of salaries

Jahangir Alam, engineer of Sariakandi Municipality, said: “A total of 15 employees of the municipality have been suffering a lot, as they did not get their salaries amounting Tk87.5 lakh for 35 months. “Former mayors of the municipality had spent employee’s salary fund to other projects.” The engineer along with license inspector, vaccination officer and electric lineman of the municipality urged authorities concerned to take steps to pay their salaries to ease their sufferings. According to Sariakandi municipality office sources, though government has established Sariakandi municipality in 1999, yet there is no permanent office building. The sources said 13,768 voters among 18,543 people live in the municipality and local Awami League leader Abdul Hamid Sardar was elected as first mayor of the town. Lter, BNP leader Tipu Sultan was elected as mayor. The two mayors of the municipality could not build an office building in the last 17 years, consequently employees of the municipality now have to work at a rented office. During the period, municipality also did not fixed taxes for the inhabitants like holding taxes and business taxes. In this time, municipality did not construct any road, build any dustbin, recruit sweepers and install any street light to improve lifestyle of citizens, alleged staff of the municipality. But the scenario has changed tremendously after Alamgir Shahi Sumon was elected as mayor on December 30, 2015. The newly elected mayor is trying to solve salary problems of employees, to improve citizens life style by taking massive development projects. Alamgir Shahi Sumon said: “After being elected as mayor I am trying to improve mass people lives by constructing new roads and reformatting old ones, installing street lights and making people conscious about their rights.” About rented office Sumon said: “Ex-mayors of the municipality did not build office but I am trying to build it. Now we are searching for suitable place to build it. We will call for tender after getting the place.” He also said the he would take measures soon so that staff of the municipality get their salaries.