The National Workforce workers, or more popularly known as PWD workers, under the Lobesa Division of the Department of Surface Transport (DoST) say their pay was cut in November and December 2024, which is leaving them in a financial crunch.
The wages of the workers are supposed to be Nu 400 a day or Nu 12,000 a month for months with 30 days and Nu 12,400 a month for months with 31 days.
Data from the workers show that in November when workers were supposed to get Nu 12,000 a month some got only Nu 11,500 and others got Nu 11,000. This means a deduction of Nu 500 to Nu 1,000.
In December, the deduction was even more steep at Nu 2,700 per month which meant that they got only Nu 9,700 as salary instead of Nu 12,400.
In certain cases, where couple workers were looking after remote stretches with more kilometers and were supposed to get Nu 30,000 together, they saw deduction as high as Nu 4,500 or Nu 4,600 per month.
The workers shared with The Bhutanese that this unexpected cut has left them in a financial crunch, and many questions on why this is happening.
“The price of things are only going up and our wages are being cut down,” said one worker.
Workers said that their wages will get cut in January and February too, and this is a bad timing as these months entail additional expenses in sending children to school. Workers say they no longer live in tents like in the past, but in proper houses now and need to pay rent too.
The workers say that till date, no authority has explained to them why their wages are being cut. Getting no answers, the workers recently even put a complaint to the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) on their mysterious wage cuts.
The daily wages of these workers were Nu 215 for many years or Nu 6,450 per month, and many workers quit in large numbers from 2016 onwards. The DoST tried to help by assigning each worker beyond the 1.5 km per worker to even 2 km or more per worker so that they could earn more since they would get paid extra for the extra stretch of road.
However, this was only a stopgap arrangement and workers continued to quit.
In November 2023 the former government stepped in and doubled this to Nu 400 a day. As a result, not only did workers stop leaving, but there were also those who joined.
Workers alleged that not only is there no information on why their wages are cut, but when some of them try and look at the salary sheet or take pictures of it, they are not allowed to do so.
Some of them alleged that in fact names of workers who had left earlier may still be on some of the salary lists, and that the ACC should verify it. When the paper asked them to provide evidence of their claims, one of them said that in some cases, some workers in the past were asked by their superiors giving the money to put their thumbprints under others names too citing that they cannot find the workers. The workers suspect these to be ghost employees.
One worker said, “The Royal Audit Authority comes every year to audit, but they never catch these things as they go by the documents shown to them, and they do not do any ground verification with us.”
The worker said that recently even the customary thumb prints against the money received was not taken from workers.
The worker alleged that in the past, a suspicious practice is that workers are given their wages from one book and then the official goes off in a hurry saying he is busy and later comes back with a different looking book, and the workers were made to sign on that book.
Lobesa is one of the 9 DoST Road Divisions across the country and looks after Gasa, Punakha and Wangdue.
The DoST Director General, Tenzin, said that the majority of National Workforce workers in the country do not fall under the monthly pay system, but come under the wage system where they are paid based on the work they do.
He said the system is performance based, where payment is given only against the work done. He said, for example, the roads have to be maintained to a certain standard, like grass cutting, drain cleaning, etc., for payment to be done.
The DG said the performance-based system was there in the past, but it could not be implemented due to low wages and workers leaving and so people were paid regardless. Now, he said the wages are higher and people are coming to join, and so the performance system is being encouraged more. He said the monthly wage system is only kept in some pockets where workers do not like to stay like high altitude areas or places where one cannot get workers easily.
The Lobesa Division Chief Engineer Karma Tenzin said that workers wages are being cut in winter as there is less work with no grass to cut and no monsoon related issues. The Chief Engineer said that since the wages is based on work done, the same workers do not complain when they get Nu 18,000 to Nu 19,000 per month during the monsoon months when there is more work clearing blockages or repairing potholes.
The Chief Engineer said the division has around 200 workers under it, and the costs of wages and dropping off workers at work points add up.
On the allegation of ghost workers, the Chief Engineer said that this issue was never brought to him, and he trusts his engineers in the field offices to not do something like this, but if workers have doubts, then they can come with him and others go to the field offices to inspect the books and ask who was asked to sign in place of others, etc.
A worker also alleged that when there is emergency work, the workers are taken and made to work and a site supervisor is put, but then the workers while getting some wages allege that they don’t really know how much wages is coming in for such work.
The Chief Engineer said that the field office Executive Engineer and engineers under them do the measurement and the division office also sends an engineer for surprise checks.
Ghost workers thump print was there since 2002….now it is easy because biometric is there..to see whose thumb print . Government must look back to the ghost workers and they were paid on daily basis, workers were given the payment according to their absent basis at site by “Laajab”.