COURTESY HT FEB 5
Five years on, sixth pay panel report still not final
Navneet Sharma
navneetsharma@hindustantimes.com
Chandigarh : The Punjab government recently decided to give salary to all new recruits as per the central pay scales, but the pay revision of 7 lakh-odd existing state employees and pensioners remains a work in progress even after a lapse of five years.
The Sixth Punjab Pay Commission, constituted by the previous SAD-BJP government on February 3, 2016, and reconstituted by the present Amarinder Singh-led Congress administration, is still to submit its recommendations on revision of pay scales, allowances and pensions of government employees and pensioners.
Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal, who earmarked Rs 4,000 crore in its budget for financial year 2020-21 for the much-delayed pay revision of employees of departments, boards and corporations, had on Monday stated that he was waiting for the pay panel recommendations to work out his budgetary allocations for the coming year. “Till the time I get their report and know about our additional financial liability on account of pay revision, I cannot anything on the state budget,” he said.
However, pay panel chairman and former chief secretary Jai Singh Gill said the commission was working on the report and would submit it to the government “very soon”. Gill refused to give any timeframe for submitting the recommendations, though. Last month, the state government, which has granted repeated extensions to the three-member commission, allowed it time till February 28 to submit the report. The delay in implementation of the new pay scales, increase in allowance and pension revision, coupled with pending dearness allowance instalments and arrears, have riled the employees and pensioners in the state.
Sanjha Mulazam Manch convener Sukhchain Singh Khehra, who is also president of Punjab Civil Secretariat Employees Association, said the Congress had, in its poll manifesto, promised to implement the pay commission but nothing has been done even though it is completing four years of its term next month. They keep talking of fund crunch, but governments can always find ways if they want,” he said, questioning the inordinate delay and repeated extensions granted to the pay panel. The previous Parkash Singh Badal government had announced the pay commission in October 2015 and then constituted it under former chief secretary RS Mann three months later. The panel received more than 450 representations from government staff and their associations.
In March 2017, the Congress came to power and Mann immediately put in his papers, citing “personal reasons”.
The new government appointed Gill, a 1968-batch IAS officer who superannuated in 2006, in his place in April 2017 and kept getting extensions. In comparison, the Central Pay Commission constituted in February 2014 for fixing fresh pay scales of central government employees had given its report in just 20 months and its recommendations were also implemented within months.
In neighbouring Haryana also, the state government had implemented the revised pay scales in December 2016 on the pattern of the pay package extended by the Central government.