New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government is likely to take a final decision by June 1 on higher allowances for 4.7 million central government employees.

The assurance was given by the Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha after a meeting with the National Joint Council of Action (NJCA), which is a centralised union of several central government employees unions.

The secretary of the NJCA, Shiv Gopal Mishra met with Sinha and asked the demand of the central government employees on allowances.

“Today I met the Cabinet Secretary and handed him over a copy of our letter regarding inordinate delay in implementation of the report of the Committee on Allowances,” Mishra said.

Sinha told Mishra that the Empowered Committee of Secretaries (E-CoS) headed by him had fixed date of 1st June, 2017 for perusal of the report of the Allowances Committee, and soon after that, the committee will send a memorandum to the Cabinet for nod.

In late June, after implementing the 7th Pay Commission proposals on salary and pension, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced the ‘Committee on Allowances’, headed by Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa to examine the suggestions on allowances. It had time till October to give the report but this got delayed.

The decision on allowances was postponed because the 7th Pay Commission wanted a number of these to be abolished or subsumed. Employee unions were opposed.

The ‘Committee on Allowances’ submitted its report to finance minister Arun Jaitley on April 27.

However, the Committee’s report on higher allowances under the 7th Pay Commission haven’t made public.

The report on allowances is now examined by the Empowered Committee of Secretaries (E-CoS) and after it, it will be placed before the Cabinet.

The central government employees now get all allowances except dearness allowance, according to the 6th Pay Commission recommendations until issuing of higher allowances notification.

TST

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The government had in June accepted the recommendation of Justice AK Mathur-headed Seventh Pay Commission in respect of the hike in basic pay and pension but its suggestions relating to allowances were referred to the committee.

The panel headed by Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa to review Seventh Pay Commission allowances is expected to soon submit its report to the government. Shiv Gopal Mishra, the convenor of National Joint Council of Action (NJCA), a joint body of unions representing central government employees, said talks in this matter are in the final leg. The employee union body will be meeting the panel members today on the issue of Housing Rent Allowance or HRA related to Seventh Pay Commission.

The government had in June accepted the recommendation of Justice AK Mathur-headed Seventh Pay Commission in respect of the hike in basic pay and pension but its suggestions relating to allowances were referred to the committee. The Seventh Pay Commission had examined a total of 196 existing allowances and, by way of rationalisation, recommended abolition of 51 allowances and subsuming of 37 allowances.

The committee on allowances was initially given a time of four months to submit its report to the finance minister. Till a final decision is taken, all existing allowances are being paid at the Sixth Pay Commission rates.
The Seventh Pay Commission had recommended that HRA be paid at the rate of 24 per cent, 16 per cent and 8 per cent of the new Basic Pay, depending on type of cities.

The Seventh Pay Commission had also recommended that the rate of HRA be revised to 27 per cent, 18 per cent and 9 per cent respectively when DA crosses 50 per cent, and further revised to 30 per cent, 20 per cent and 10 per cent when DA crosses 100 per cent.

Typically, in case of housing allowance, arrears are not paid.

Allowances form a significant chunk of government employees’ salary. Some analysts had earlier said that implementation of the housing allowance portion of the Seventh Pay Commission as well as GST or Goods and Services Tax could push up average inflation.

“At worst, if the government is under pressure, this allowance can be pushed to the next year, as was done in the previous pay commissions. The housing allowance does not attract arrears,” HSBC Securities had said in an earlier report.

The Cabinet had also decided to constitute two separate committees to suggest measures for streamlining the implementation of National Pension System (NPS) and to look into anomalies likely to arise out of implementation of the Commission’s Report.

Source: NDTV

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