Howrah News Service -  Latest news and headlines on Howrah,West Bengal and World: Govt to discuss pay report at next Cabinet meeting

Govt to discuss pay report at next Cabinet meeting
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ASIANAGE on 03 July, 2008 03:10:20
 
By MUKESH RANJAN
NEW DELHI
July 3: With high-powered Committee of Secretaries (CoS) headed by Cabinet
Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar handing over the Sixth Pay Commission report
suggesting a few cosmetic changes, the government is now likely to consider it
in the next meeting of the Union Cabinet.
Informing about this, a senior Union Cabinet minister on the condition of
anonymity said, "In the next meeting of the Cabinet, the Pay Commission report
would be discussed and hopefully a decision will be arrived at."
The CoS, even after reviewing the entire report and going through the
grievances raised by various sections of the government employees, however
failed to address all the concerns and instead it suggested hiving off the
arrears by 18 months.
This means that instead of these to be computed from January 1, 2006, as
suggested by the Pay Commission, the employees should get from July 1, 2007.
As per the report, a copy of which is with this newspaper, defence service
personnel, paramilitary forces and other security personnel would, however, get
flat increase of 15 per cent in their salary.
Interestingly, the report has also suggested increasing annual increment of
four per cent of the basic and dearness allowance instead of 2.5.
Since there were widespread discontents among government employees with the
original recommendations of the Pay Commission, the government had decided to
constitute a high-powered CoS to review them.
The CoS, though looked into the demands of the armed forces for whom even
defence minister A.K. Antony chipped in to persuade Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh and finance minister P. Chidambaram and suggested something to soothe
them, the concerns of other sections of the government employees, including that
of police service personnel and group B and C staff, have been ignored.
The Indian Police Service (IPS) personnel have consistently been lobbying to
become at par with Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Indian Foreign
Service (IFS) officials. But their demands have been ignored.
Similarly, the CoS tried to address the salary slab anomalies by reducing it to
only 15 category instead of 25 originally suggested to meet the demands of the
group-B&C employees.
Sources in the government said, "Hopefully, the Union Cabinet, when it takes up
the matter, will refer it to a GoM, headed by a senior minister."