7th Pay Commission – Advantages to Government or Employees?

The Central Government employees are scheduled to get salary hikes on the basis of the recommendations by January 1, 2016. According to sources, the house rent allowance too would see an increase by 20 per cent. But the most significant recommendation is that 5 to 6 per cent of the annual increment would be performance-based. There is also likely to be a provision of retiring under-performing employees by the age of 55 or 30 years of service, whichever is more.

The Finance ministry has already opened its stand saying, the Seventh Pay Commission will be mindful of the fiscal concerns of the government while giving its report on new pay scales and remunerations for central government employees and pensioners.

So the question which arises in everybody’s mind is, for whom the 7th Pay Commission is for? Is it for the Central Government employees or for the Government? For Whose benefit is it working?

For example there is a rumour floating around that the CGHS facility is going to take its last breath after 7th CPC. The Seventh Pay commission is planning to propose health insurance scheme to replace Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) at highly subsidized rates.

The pay panel will ask the central government to urge the insurance industry to come up with feasible health insurance solution for the central government employees and pensioners. The IRDA, the insurance regulatory body of India, will be compelled to ask the health insurance companies to offer a basic insurance to every central government employee and pensioner, regardless of age or medical condition and will not be allowed to make a profit of this basic insurance.

Health insurance would be available for central government employees and pensioners till death, the insured employees and pensioners will have to pay 50% of the premium from their salaries and pensions and the remaining 50% premium may be paid by the central government.

The CGHS is financed mainly through the Centre’s tax revenues. Though beneficiaries do contribute a share of their wages towards premium, ranging from Rs 600 to Rs 6,000 a year depending on their pay scale, this accounts for just about 5 per cent of the total expenditure. The government shells out the remaining 95 per cent.

However, now the Government is looking for ways to end the CGHS in its current form and to move to an insurance based health scheme to cut costs.

Recently, the CG Employee’s Welfare Ministry released an announcement which has created confusion and fury among the CG employees.

In the announcement it has been said that the senior officials have to analyse the service record and decide whether employees who have completed thirty years of service or reached their 50th year should continue their service or be advised to leave service after three months notice.

Does it take a management to learn that an official or an employee is unfit to continue in service when he has reached his 50th year? Does it take thirty years of continuous service to assess the efficiency of an employee?

Then what is the need for a probation period? After serving the Government for 30 years or till his 50th year, if somebody is asked to quit just like that, giving some damn reason when he is old, appears rather inhumane.

Unlike in the private sector, the pay hike in government is a once-in-10-years-affair. The Government need not and should not compare the Government employees with the private sector. The private sector works on profit mode, but the government organisations work in the service mode.

The NJCA at the Meeting of the Confederation held at Hyderabad on 09th October 2015 while endorsing the decision of the National Joint Council of Action (Railway, Defence & Confederation) to organize massive protest dharna at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi on 19th November 2015 and also Nationwide Protest Demonstration in front of all works spot & offices, has decided to further intensify the protest action against the negative attitude of the Government for the Unwarranted intervention of the Finance Ministry in the independent functioning of the Pay Commission by issuing a statement asking the 7th CPC to factor into its report the fiscal concern of the government and thereby to pressurize the commission not to recommend wage rise on the basis of a sound and scientific formulation and Causing engineered delay by the Government in the submission of 7th CPC report by granting four months extension upto 31st December 2015, even when the Pay Commission was ready to submit its report within the stipulated time i.e. 28th August 2015.