Employees fear delay in getting 7th Pay Commission award

New Delhi: Central government employees have raised concerns over announcing the 7th Pay Commission award, saying this may further delay in announcement which will ultimately result into their financial health.

The employees have been promised for 7th Pay Commission award in fiscal 2016-17 as Rs 70,000 crore has been provisioned in the Union Budget 2016-17 for implementation of Seventh Pay Commission for government employees, a top finance ministry official said.

Implementation of the pay commission report in toto is to cost the government Rs 1.02 lakh crore.

“We have provisioned for around 60-70 per cent of the total burden that was talked about,” the official said adding about Rs 70,000 crore has been provided in the Budget.

“We will wait to see the report of the Empowered Committee of Secretaries on the Seventh Pay Commission and decide if we need further allocation,” he said.

The Budget document states that “the implementation of the 7th Pay Commission due from January 1, 2016 is to be implemented during 2016-17 fiscal.”

The report of the Seventh Pay Commission was presented to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on November 19 with a recommendation for 14.27 per cent increase in basic pay. The overall increase in salary, allowances and pensions is 23.55%. The increase in allowances will be higher by 63% while pensions will rise 24%.

The government set up a 13-member Empowered Committee of Secretaries (CoS) headed by Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha for processing the report of the Seventh Pay Commission before cabinet nod.

An Implementation Cell has been created in the Finance Ministry which works as the Secretariat of the Empowered Committee. All central government employees unions’ submitted their written demands in respect of seventh pay commission’s anomalies in the cell to review, which are under process.

“One Rank One Pension (OROP) is now going to be implemented after notification. Hence Finance Ministry will issue the notification of ‘Pay Commission award’ in forthcoming months,” Finance Ministry officials told our reporters on February 4.

“With an eye on implementation of Pay Commission award, the government will not hike the dearness allowance (DA) to 1119% from existing 125%. The DA hike will be merged with the new pay as the Pay Commission made report, assuming that the rate of Dearness Allowance would be 125 percent at the time of implementation of the pay commission recommendation, i.e. on January 1.

Hence, the government will not announce separate DA to hike existing 119 percent to 125 percent effective from January 2016,” Finance Ministry officials also told our reporters on January 7.

The central government not only issued gazette notification of One Rank One Pension (OROP) for ex-servicemen but also announced 6 per cent hike in dearness allowance (DA) on March 23, taking it to 125 per cent of basic pay.

The Finance Ministry and the the Committee of Secretaries on the Seventh Pay Commission said nothing till date about implementation of the pay commission report after the latest DA announcement was made.

Central government employees have expressed frustration at this, and are worried that the the 7th pay commission’s recommendations might not be come out in time.

However, it is to note that the model code of conduct, which is currently in place for five states assemblies’ poll that bars the central government from announcing the 7th Pay Commission award.

We hope, the central government may announce the 7th Pay Commission award, most probably after ending the model code of conduct on May 21, which will cover 48 lakh central government employees and 52 lakh pensioners.