District Collector P.B. Noohu on Wednesday said the delay in disbursing wages to Sabarimala Sanitation Society workers was due to certain serious mistakes detected in the bill submitted by the member secretary.
Talking to The Hindu, Mr. Noohu said he suspected huge corruption taking place in the name of sanitation work at Sabarimala.
The Collector said he had released the pending wages to all those eligible workers, as per the attendance registered through biometric punching, on Wednesday.
Mr. Noohu said the administration had introduced biometric punching for the SSS workers deployed at Sabarimala as a pilot project in 2018-19.
The system was enforced during the annual pilgrim season that came to a close on January 21 in an effort to check corruption, if any, in the name of the innocent Tamil workers at Sabarimala, he said.
A manual attendance register too was maintained as a secondary source.
Mr. Noohu said he was convinced of largescale corruption taking place in the name of cleaning drive at Sabarimala and had decided to order an official inquiry into the matter soon.
A total of 900 workers from the bordering villages of Tamil Nadu were deployed for cleaning work at Sabarimala, Pampa, Nilackal, Pandalam and Kulanada during the annual Mandalam-Makaravilakku pilgrim season.
