Staff union urges CM to remove Bali as tourism corp Chairman
The Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (HPTDC) Employees Association today urged Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu to take charge of the corporation and remove its Chairman RS Bali.
HPTDC Employees Association president Hukam Ram, while addressing mediapersons here, alleged that the corporation had provided wrong information in the High Court of Himachal regarding the financial health of its 18 hotels. “These hotels were incorrectly shown as loss-making properties, which is not the case,” he claimed. He added that there was probably a conspiracy to hand over these hotels to private players.
The High Court had passed an order to shut down all these loss-making hotels but later allowed the HPTDC to keep nine of them running until March 31. Hukam Ram said that they would file a petition in the High Court to keep all 18 hotels operational. RS Bali could not be contacted for his response.
Hukum Ram said that it was wrong on the part of the corporation to present the occupancy rate as the only criterion to show whether the hotels were running in losses or profit. “The occupancy rate alone cannot be the basis for deciding whether a hotel is running in loss or profit, as there are many other income sources such as banquet halls, cafes, etc. These figures were not presented in the court,” he alleged. He added, “We wanted the HPTDC Chairman to address the situation but he remained silent till now. We want to know the reason behind his silence.”
The association appealed to the state government to provide at least Rs 50 crore as a one-time grant to help the corporation recover from losses and pay pending financial benefits to pensioners and its employees. The association said that it would launch a mass movement if the government failed to fulfil its demands.
Meanwhile, the association lauded the court’s decision to allow nine out of 18 hotels to operate till March 31, and urged the court to allow the corporation to run other nine hotels as well.
