Friday, January 23, 2009

Uttarakhand extends pay panel benefits to teachers

Despite facing a financial crisis, the Uttarakhand government today extended the benefits of the Sixth Pay Commission to agitating teaching and non-teaching staff of its aided schools and provided a series of higher grades to all other 160,000 sulking employees.

The move is likely to compound the government’s worries in the face of the financial turmoil due to the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission report and the global recession.

Under the new pay revision, the government will have to shell out a total of Rs 4,000 crore till March 31, 2009, in terms of arrears and increased salaries to its employees. This has put a heavy burden on the state exchequer as the total budget of the state stands at Rs 5,600 crore in the current fiscal. Officials admitted that with the increase of non-plan expenditure, the new development projects would get badly affected.

The latest decision would benefit over 11,000 teaching and non-teaching staff of the government-aided schools as they had been earlier left out of the ambit of the Sixth Pay Commission. Besides this, the government today declared a series of higher grades and other benefits like Assured Career Progression (ACP) for its employees on the pattern of the Centre.

On the other hand, the list of pensioners is ballooning fast in the state with the addition of 114,000 more people during the past two years. Before the BJP government came to power in 2007, the total number of pensioners in the state was only 172,000. Top officials said all the new pensioners will now be entitled for the benefits of the new pay report as well.

The officials added that the government has now sought permission from the Centre to take additional market borrowings of Rs 750 crore to overcome the crisis.

Soruce: http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/uttarakhand-extends-pay-panel-benefits-to-teachers/00/05/346730/

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