Bad NY start for Aavin workers as salaries delayed

Vellore dairy sources revealed that the problem started when a senior official in the accounts department bluntly refused to do the needful stating that he was being overworked without any relief. When others demanded the official to do his work and convey his grievance to his senior later, he in turn demanded to be shifted to another department.

When the news about the delay leaked out, senior officials tried to play down the issue but not before questions were raised about the availability of funds to provide salary to the staff. It may be recalled that similar problems were highlighted earlier when the dairy was incurring unnecessary expenditure, to which sources accepted that they could use the fund available for providing employees their wages.

When this reporter contacted the Aavin headquarters (TN Cooperative Milk Producers Federation), a senior official said that the issue had not come to their notice, but suggested that the affected staff could urge the Vellore dairy chairman D Velazhagan, to do the needful. But Vellore dairy sources said that the affected workers were reluctant to approach the chairman as most of them were recruited by him. General manager PM Ganesa blamed a national bank for the lapse in payments and said that they had not passed the wage bill due to in-house issues. When asked why they should pass a wage bill now as earlier the bank was crediting the employees’ salary to their individual accounts directly, the GM had no reply. “We expect salaries to be paid either on Jan 3 or 4,” Ganesa concluded.