Workers work overtime, don’t get paid for it, the agency responsible for paying them accuses the official concerned in the government organisation where they allege misappropriation, that official cries foul, a probe committee is formed, the official found guilty, the official cries foul again, another committee is formed, the official absolved, a meeting held to review it all decides to pay, though remains silent on the big W: when.
Silence is maintained on the other W and the lone H front, too: why payments were not made, and how the money was misappropriated, if it was misappropriated.

This isn’t the story of a government department, or even a grounded airline named after a bird for that matter. It’s far closer to the real world — the Yamuna hostel, run under the aegis of the women and child development ministry and nestled in the greens of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), whose dean of student welfare (DSW) office looks after the hostel’s administration.
The tale could well be small but glimpses of the ‘India story’ are never far away. And in that lies its significance.
But first the story so far: the three sanitation workers employed at the hostel have not been paid their overtime dues for the last 12 years. Simple arithmetic says for an average of three years put in by each worker, the overtime would be for 150 days. At the current minimum wage rate of '279, each worker thus stands to get '41,850.

In a report released on October 19, 2011, a fact-finding committee (FFC) comprising Sachidanand Sinha, the former assistant dean of students, and Ritu Priya Mehrotra, provost of ‘Uttarakhand’ (one of the four blocks in the campus), confirmed that though the cleaning staff reported for work for 30 days in a month, they were paid for 26 days. Days taken off were deducted from these 26 days.

The committee also reported that Najmul Arif, the hostel warden for 12 years, kept '2,000 per month from a sanitation worker named Chhalia with the promise to deposit the money in a bank account opened in her name. This went on for five months: whenever Chhalia asked for the money, she was told that it was with the contractor, M/S Bedi and Bedi, whose staff did not answer her calls.

According to the committee, the hostel administration did not get the contractor to open employees’ state insurance (ESI) and provident fund (PF) accounts of workers, as is mandatory under the agreement between DSW and the contractor. Neither did the administration inform the DSW, the committee reported.
 
So where did the money go?
That’s one tough question, and like many things associated with governance in India, with no answer yet. “Arif (the hostel warden) asked us to give salaries in cash,” claimed Aman Bedi, director (finance) at Bedi and Bedi. “She said group-D employees do not have bank accounts (to encash cheques) and asked us to not deduct PF from their salary as they were low-paid employees and would be left with little to spend.”
Bedi also claimed Arif took over the task of disbursing this money, contending that the workers were not free between 10 am and 11 am, when the company sent its executives. “She said the workers will be free after 4 pm, and that she would then distribute the money,” Bedi claimed. “She also provided attendance records of the workers over phone and never acknowledged in writing the cash we gave her. She asked the cashier to do so,” he said.
Arif, though, refuted the allegations, calling them “politically motivated”. “The warden has no role in paying the workers,” she said, adding that the onus is on the contractor.
 
So what happened to fact-finding panel’s report?
That’s easier to answer — like many things Indian, it was junked. The varsity administration set up another panel — the one-man Rameshwar Singh Committee (RSC) — whose report, now tabled, has given Arif a clean chit on the grounds that “workers cannot be trusted”.
Calling the earlier report biased, the RSC said there is no way to establish Arif was involved in disbursing salaries.

“We have found no evidence (to prove) any allegation against the warden. We will take necessary action when we come across evidence,” JNU rector Sudha Pai told Governance Now.

Asked why a second panel was constituted even though a detailed report of the earlier panel was available to the administration, Pai brushed it aside as “internal matter” of the university.

Vice-chancellor Prof SK Sopory said the Rameshwar Singh committee was set up to make a comprehensive report on the entire administration of the hostel. “There has been no management committee meeting in the Yamuna hostel for the last eight to 10 years. So we needed another investigative report on the hostel’s administration, besides one on the workers,” he told Governance Now.

“Any employee who has worked but has not been paid will be paid without any delay,” Prof Sopory added.

On her part, Arif, the warden, said the second panel was required since the fact-finding report was not correct, though she did not elaborate on it.
 
So who is to be blamed?
Sachidanand Sinha of the fact-finding committee said they probed in detail each allegation made by students and workers against the warden. “We took 40 to 50 complaints in writing, took down details, crosschecked all documents,” he said. “As an assistant dean of students, I have no personal grudge against Najmul Arif; I only did what was assigned to me.”
Calling the DSW office the hub for all worker payments, Sinha said the contractors could not have failed to pay but for negligence of the hostel authorities. “Even I cannot absolve myself of the responsibility. It was for us to see that the contractor delivered on time,” he said.
 
So what happens now?
The JNU administration ended the five-year contract with Bedi and Bedi in December 2012. “We received an email from Mr Satpal (of JNU administration) stating that the contract ends on December 31, 2012,” Aman Bedi said. Though he refused to divulge contents of the email, Bedi said the decision was abrupt and unexpected for the company.

While it is a mystery why JNU administration formed another probe committee after a detailed report by the first, including deposition by workers and students, and why it took a nine-day hunger strike by residents, which the new one-man panel claims was a coercive measure, to evict the warden from the hostel premises, the management committee in early March arrived at a collective decision to pay the workers their dues. Sucharita Sen, assistant professor of JNU who took part in the meeting, said, “It was decided that the workers will be paid according to the current wage rate.” Sen, however, did not comment on the timeline for the payment, saying only that the date will be decided once minutes of the meeting are announced officially.