Imphal, January 17: Aggrieved employees of Imphal Municipal Council (IMC) have decided to go on a cease work strike from January 20 demanding their pending salaries and pensions for the last 15 months.

According to reports, the Council has not be able to pay salaries and pensions to its employees as the High Court has put a restriction on withdrawal of the revenue accrued from octroi following a Court case.

After signing an agreement in April 2003, IMC engaged Nongyeen Enterprises, Lilong Chajing for collecting the octroi tax on the condition that the latter should give an amount of Rs 20,83,100 as revenue every month.

But the private firm failed to live up to its commitment and finally approached the Council for waiving off an outstanding due amount of Rs 65,00,000 on that ground that it could not collect the taxes during the period from June/July to August 17.2004 due to various bandhs an blockade imposed.

Subsequently, the State Government intervened and gave instruction to the IMC to nullify the agreement and take up the task of octroi collection by itself.

Upon this, the Nongyeen Enterprises, pleaded the High Court for staying withdrawal of the amount accrued from octroi collection.

IMC officials contended that the plea of the Nongyeen Enterprises that it could not collect the octroi tax due to bandh and blockade was unreasonable, as there are relevant documents to prove that it had collected over Rs 30,000,00 during the said period.

The final hearing of the case has been fixed on January 19.Meanwhile, IMC Chairperson G Manglemjao has appealed to the employees not to withdraw their decision of launching cease work strike from January 20 onward.

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