The Karnataka government has issued an official order to release two years of unpaid honorarium to weather measurers across the state, Water Resources Minister N. Chaluvarayaswamy said on October 10.
The minister said the weather measurers had gone without honorarium for the past two years and were facing financial hardship because they depended on the payments for their livelihoods. He disclosed the decision in a press statement.
According to Chaluvarayaswamy, a group of weather measurers recently met him and brought the pending payments to his notice. They told him that the stoppage of honorarium had put their livelihoods under severe pressure.
The minister said he directed departmental officials to ensure that the honorarium for both years was paid immediately. He added that senior officials in the department approved the relevant files within a week and issued an official order for the complete release of the outstanding honorarium.
The announcement concerns field-level workers whose observations form part of the state’s weather-monitoring arrangements. The supplied statement does not specify the total number of weather measurers covered, the total amount sanctioned, or the date by which the payments will reach individual recipients.
Chaluvarayaswamy described the approval process as unusually fast, saying that examples of such a rapid release of salary arrears to financially vulnerable workers were rare in the government’s history. His statement did not provide details of the administrative delay that had resulted in the two-year backlog.
The order is a step towards clearing the arrears, but the statement does not confirm whether all payments have already been credited. The next milestone is the department’s implementation of the release order and payment of the pending honorarium to the weather measurers.
