7th Pay Commission: Higher Allowances Effective From Next Fiscal

7th Pay Commission: Higher Allowances Effective From Next Fiscal

New Delhi: The new allowances for the central government employees is likely to be implemented from April 1 next year, a government official confirmed on Thursday.

“The government employees, for sure, will get higher allowances under the new pay scale from the next fiscal year…. However, the government plans to pay higher allowance, under 7th Pay Commission recommendations, with retrospective effect from August 2016,” a senior finance ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The ‘Committee on Allowances’, he said, will submit its report to the government in this month.

Alongside recommending new allowances structure for the employees, the committee will suggest various reforms to the existing allowances structure including the house rent allowance (HRA) for the employees, mentioned the official. So it will take a little more time to implement the recommendations after scrutinising those, he added.

The official claimed that neither Finance Minister Arun Jaitley nor the PMO responsible for delaying the implementation of the new allowances.

When our reporter pointed out that the finance ministry on several occasions had hinted at implementing the higher allowances would be made soon, the official said the ministry only had expressed his intentions to implement it, but a time frame can only be estimated when the report is available with the government.

The government in July last year had formed the ‘Committee on Allowances’, headed by Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa, for examination of the recommendations of 7th Pay Commission on allowances other than dearness allowance as the pay commission had recommended abolition of 51 allowances and subsuming 37 others out of 196 allowances.

The committee was asked to submit its report within four months, but later its tenure was extended to February 22, this year.

However, the Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa said in October last year, “We are ready to submit our report, when the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley calls up.”

The central government employees and pensioners got theirs arrears of basic pay and pension arising from implementation of the 7th Pay Commission recommendations in one go in August salaries and pension respectively. The hike in basic pay and pension has been made effective from January 1, 2016 but the they are still awaiting for the higher allowances.

The employees now get all allowances except dearness allowance, according to the 6th Pay Commission recommendations until issuing of higher allowances notification.

Source : The Sen Times