Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi today appealed to the state government employees to give up their agitation against alleged discrepancies in the pay panel recommendations adopted by the government.
“I see no reason for them to agitate as around 90 per cent of the employees will get a revised pay of more or equal to central payscales,” he said.
“Agitation will not help as everyone is committed to the people. They will find no chief minister as sympathetic to the employees as I am,” he added.
Two employees’ unions, the Sadou Assam Karmachari Parishad (SAKP) and the State Employees Joint Action Committee Assam, are on the warpath against alleged discrepancies in the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations adopted by Dispur.
“The employees are demanding payscales on a par with the central government employees and that the new payscales should be made effective from January 2006 and not from April 2009. In this connection, I would like to mention that quite a few states like Andhra Pradesh and Manipur are yet to revise the payscales of their employees. Some states like Tripura, Meghalaya and West Bengal have not yet adopted central government payscales,” he said.
“Even an advanced state like Karnataka has not adopted the central government payscales,” he said.
According to him, while the dearness allowance (DA) paid by the Assam government is at the same rate as the Centre’s, DA rates in some other states are lower.
“I agree that in course of the implementation of a new pay system, some anomalies may come to light. To address and rectify those anomalies, I have constituted an anomaly committee with retired IAS officer C.K. Das as chairman and principal secretary, home and political departments, S.C. Das and principal secretary, general administration and secretarial administration, P.K. Borthakur as members,” the chief minister said.
Manipur
The apex body of government employees in Manipur has served an ultimatum on chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh to fulfil its demand for a pay hike or face an indefinite ceasework in a fortnight’s time.
In a representation submitted to Ibobi Singh yesterday, the joint administrative council of employees’ organisations of various government departments set January 15 as the deadline to implement the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations.
A council spokesman said if the demand was not fulfilled, the employees would go for an indefinite ceasework from January 16.
The employees have been agitating on and off since November 2008, pressuring the government to give enhanced pay to more than 60,000 government employees. The agitation was called off after Ibobi Singh promised the employees that he would consider the demand on receiving the report of the 13th Finance Commission.
The functioning of the government was paralysed for more than three months after the employees went on a ceasework since November 27, 2008.
Ibobi Singh is on record stating that the present fiscal position of the state was not conducive to pay hike.
It is estimated that the government is spending about Rs 1,080 crore a year to disburse salaries. Implementation of the new pay rate will cost the government an additional amount of Rs 325 crore annually.
“The government has started implementing the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations for IAS, IPS and Indian Forest Service officers. We are not asking anything more. We are making only our rightful demand,” information and publicity secretary of the council, L. Priyobratta, said.
Source : The Telegraph.
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