State Govt employees to get 3 pc increment

Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI, Jan 29 – Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today took a decision favouring annual increment to the State Government employees at the rate of three per cent of their basic pay with retrospective effect, rejecting the concept of one per cent performance-based annual increment recommended by the State Pay Commission, 2008. The Commission had recommended a general annual increment of two per cent to all the employees, keeping a provision for another increment of one per cent to be based on their performance.

But there was vehement opposition from the employees to this provision of performance-based increment and their organizations demanded that the annual increment should be fixed at three per cent of the basic pay. They argued that the yardstick of performance would divide the employees and would thus affect the overall performance of the Government.

According to an official press release here, the Chief Minister today said that the revised pay for the employees would be fixed notionally with effect from January 1, 2006.

The Chief Minister further decided that the house rent allowance will be given at the rate of 15 per cent of the basic pay in Guwahati city, 12 per cent in district and sub-divisional headquarters and 10 per cent in all other places of the State, irrespective of the employees living in rented houses or in their own houses.

The Chief Minister has also enhanced the fixed pay of the casual and ad-hoc employees from Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,500 per month. He directed the Finance Department to take expeditious steps for preparing the Revised Order of Pay (ROP) and other necessary Government orders accordingly, said the press release.

The Sadou Asam Karmachari Parishad (SAKP) has hailed the above decisions of the Chief Minister as positive developments. These decisions have been taken in accordance with the decisions of the bi-partite meeting of the SAKP with the Chief Secretary of the State on January 19, said the SAKP in a press release here.

The SAKP thanked the Chief Minister for his initiatives to resolve the issues concerning the revision of pay scales of the employees through negotiation and expressed the hope that the anomalies committee set up to remove the anomalies in introducing the revised pay scales of the employees, would be able to perform its assigned jobs within a short time.

However, the speedy implementation of the revised scales of pay depends on the urgent steps to remove the technical problems faced in preparing the ROP, it said.