Employees seek clarity on 14 additional allowances that the pay panel did not include in its reportA panel headed by Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa, tasked with examining the 7th Pay Commission’s (7th CPC) recommendations on allowances, has been forced to delay wrapping up its deliberations as representatives of the central government’s 4.7 million employees have sought clarity on 14 additional allowances that the pay panel did not include in its report.
This will lead to the late submission of
observations by the Lavasa panel to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley,
which, in turn, will cause a delay in the Union Cabinet’s and Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s final decision on the matter.
Out of 196 allowances, the 7th CPC report
recommended the abolition of 52 allowances and subsuming of another 36
into the existing ones. In addition, there were some 14 allowances that
were not included in the report. These included accident allowance,
allowance in lieu of running room facilities, breach of rest allowance,
ghat allowance, officiating allowance, outstation detention and
receiving allowances, shunting allowance, trip allowance and waiting
duty allowance, among others. The CPC report stated that allowances not
mentioned in the report should be abolished anyway.
“We have had representations from employee
unions that a decision should be taken on these allowances as well.
These have come from various ministries and hence a call will have to be
taken. There will be another meeting soon to decide on this particular
matter,” said a senior government official.
The official said the CPC’s original
expenditure assessment of nearly Rs 30,000 crore additional annual
outlay on implementing its recommendations on allowances is expected to
be unchanged.
All other decisions, including on house rent
allowance, will be finalised in the next meeting, which the Lavasa panel
hopes will be its last one, the official added.
After that the cabinet is expected to decide the issue soon. It is understood that the Centre wants to move fast on this issue.
In late June last year, after implementing
the CPC proposals on salary and pension, Jaitley had announced the
Lavasa panel would 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 CPC wanted a number of them to be
abolished or subsumed, while employee unions opposed this.
A deferment on revising of allowances meant
that as opposed to a burden of Rs 1.02 lakh crore as envisaged by the
CPC, the government had provisioned for Rs 84,933 crore in 2016-17 for
pay and pension, including Rs 12,000 crore in arrears.
There are other recommendations on allowances
which the panel led by Lavasa has been tasked with examining. These
include a change in the present system of accounting, wherein pay and
allowances are clubbed and it is difficult to bifurcate them. The CPC
recommended a separate object head for budgeting and accounting be used
to record the expenditure.
Source : Bushiness standard
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