Government to take final call on allowances by June 1

Government to take final call on allowances by June 1

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