Bureaucracy Delays Pay Commission Award

New Delhi: Central government employees has blamed “government bureaucracy” for delays in implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission Award.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, “We have enough funds to implement the Seventh Pay Commission Award shortly.”

The Seventh Pay Commission turned out to be complicated to implement because convincing every section of government employees was not easy, a senior official in Finance Ministry, who familiar with the pay commission matter said.

The Pay Commission took 21 months to finalise its report.

“Hence, the government officials of implementation cell observed the entire procedure to finalise in short time to get benefit to central government employees, and then immediate cooldown with dry ice, as they got one year time to review it” he added.

The central government was told by the employees unions that the implementation cell started the works but ran into delays, he also said.

“The bureaucracy of implementation cell delays the review process of the Seventh Pay Commission Award,” one employees’ union said, adding: “Dry ice is added every two days while the paperwork is sorted out.”

An official of the Finance Ministry’s Implementation cell told us on Wednesday that reviews the Seventh Pay Commission reports of progress against some of the most devastating complications like minimum pay, which affects millions of central government employees.

We are also mulling for doubling of existing rates of allowances and advances, which has been recommended for abolition by Seventh Pay Commission like risk allowance, small family allowance, festival advance, motor cycle advance, he added.

In view of complications over the Seventh Pay Commission report, we will need more time to solve this complications before it would be placed the cabinet for its nod through the group of secretaries of revision pay panel report headed by cabinet secretary after approval Expenditure Secretary. So, It takes time to get final position, he confirmed.

However, central government employees Unions accuse bureaucracy of delay tactics in the Seventh Pay Commission Award but the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, “We have enough funds to implement the Seventh Pay Commission Award shortly.”

The Seventh Pay Commission was set up by the UPA government in February 2014, The Commission headed by Justice A K Mathur submitted its 900-page final report to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on February 19, recommending 23.55 per cent hike in salaries and allowances of Central government employees and pensioners.

After receiving the pay panel report, the Finance Ministry has set up a cell for period of one year with effect from November 20, 2015 to implement the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission headed by R K Chaturvedi, Joint Secretary.

The panel recommended a 14.27 per cent increase in basic pay, the lowest in 70 years. The previous Sixth Pay Commission had recommended a 20 per cent hike, which the government doubled while implementing it in 2008.

The Seventh pay commission recommended fixing the highest basic salary at Rs 250,000 and the lowest at Rs 18,000 and its increased the pay gap between the minimum and maximum from existing 1:12 to 1: 13.8

The government constitutes the Pay Commission almost every 10 years to revise the pay scale of its employees and pensioners, often these are adopted by states after some modifications. However, the Seventh Pay Commission suggested to discontinue the practice of appointing pay commissions in future. Read More: - tkbsen