Staff salary eating away development funds: Nagaland CM

Nagaland Chief Minister Shurhozelie Liezietsu today said the state government is not being able to provide adequate funds for development due to huge expenditure incurred for payment of salaries to its employees.
Agreeing with the concern expressed by the legislators that excess and random appointment of employees and fictitious pensioners need to be addressed, Liezietsu said the government would seriously deal with the issue.
The Chief Minister was replying to a general discussion on the 2017-18 state budget in the legislative Assembly.
Nagaland already has the highest ratio of government employees to population in the country, Liezietsu said.
"This has become a big burden to the state exchequer and because of the huge financial cost involved, we are unable to provide adequate funds for development activities," he said.

The implementation of the new pay revision (7th ROP) being finalised for state government employees, it would increase the financial burden of the state, apart from the issue of unauthorised appointments which should not be allowed, he said.

"We all need to join hands to contribute in our respective departments to reduce unnecessary manpower, so that we can focus our resources on more substantive issues of development," the Chief Minister said.
Regarding fictitious pensioners, the Chief Minister assured the House that all necessary steps were being taken to bring the guilty to book.
Liezietsu also asserted that concrete steps would be initiated to bring down the deficit in the state budget.