Sixth pay panel triggers hike for PSU employees

he government has finally decided to revise the pay scales of employees working in 69 public sector undertakings  {PSU} on the lines of the Pay Commission offered to central government staff.

The benefit of pay revision will be allowed only to employees of those CPSUs that are not making losses and are in a position to absorb the additional expenditure from their own resources without any budgetary support.  The PSUs include Mahanagar Telecom Nigam (MTNL), Indian Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC), NHPC and North-Eastern Electric Power Corporation (Neepco) among others. These PSUs follow the central dearness allowance pattern and are governed by a separate high power pay committee.  “The pay scales of the employees will be revised with effect from January 2006. It will be now up to the board of directors of the respective public sector company to consider the pay revision, keeping in mind the affordability and capacity of the CPSU. They’ll have to submit a proposal to their respective administrative ministry, which will approve the proposal with the concurrence of its financial advisor,” a department of public enterprise official said.  As per the recommendations, there will also be a revision in city compensatory allowance, house rent allowance and dearness allowance (DA).  Already in April this year, the government had increased the DA for PSUs by 6% with effect from January this year.  “This will make a stronger case for the early implementation of the second pay revision committee report for the companies following the industrial dearness allowance pattern. However, not all companies following the CDA pattern will be able to adopt the new pay revisions as some of them are sick or loss-making units,” the official said. Source : The Economic Times.