Kolkata, October 4 (IANS) Although the Central Government has announced that the 8th Pay Commission will be effective from January 1 next year, uncertainty will be made on how long the government employees of West Bengal will stay under the sixth pay commission.
According to Sources in the West Bengal Finance Department, a major technical issue exists that will make a hurdles for the Mamta government to initiate the process of implementing the 7th Pay Commission.
Explaining the technical issue, an official of the State Finance Department said that two major conditions should be met to implement a new pay commission.
The first is that in the last pay commission, dearness allowance should be 50 percent or more. The second major aspect is that once the dearness allowance rate crosses 50 percent, it should be merged with the original salary.
Officials of the state finance department said, “This merger effectively resets dearness allowance of 50 percent or more in the previous pay commission, zero in the proposed new pay commission to decide future growth on the basis of inflation.”
Now, this technical issue is the most difficult barrier that the West Bengal government is facing the announcement of the 7th Pay Commission.
This is because the central government and most other state governments are offering dearness allowance to their employees at 50 percent or more time, employees of the West Bengal government are currently receiving dearness allowance at the rate of only 18 percent.
This means that the West Bengal government will have to bridge a gap of 32 percent to reach the payment level of 50 percent.
Various associations of the Government of West Bengal claimed that it would not have been technical mess, the state government followed the All India Consumer Price Index (AICPI), which was a benchmark for calculating and determining dearness allowance for its employees, as was done by the Central Government and most of the State Governments.
The Union Cabinet has approved a three percent increase in dearness allowance rates for central government employees and pensioners earlier this week, compared to the difference in DA rates given to West Bengal government employees, has increased by 40 percent compared to their counterparts in the central government.
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SRC/SVN