KCR makes govt staff happy

Hyderabad: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao on Thursday announced 43 per cent fitment in pay scales to the State government employees. The hike in salaries will be implemented retrospectively from June 2, 2014. The new salary would be paid from March. This decision would benefit over 4 lakh government employees and 2.4 lakh retired staff.

• Announces PRC with 43% fitment for TS employees
• 6,500-crore additional burden on exchequer

The announcement made after a two-hour long meeting with the employees' associations received huge applause. The Chief Minister said that it was the first pay revision implementation for the employees after the formation of Telangana. As promised, the government had taken the decision to hike the salary beyond their expectations.

The revision would put an additional burden of about Rs 6,500 crore on the exchequer but the employees particularly of the revenue earning departments have promised to put in more hard work to increase the revenue generation for the government, he said.

When pointed out that the government had decided to hike the salaries much in excess to the recommendation of 29 per cent fitment made by the 10th Pay Revision Commission (PRC), the Chief Minster said that there were several instances of State Governments increasing salaries beyond the PRC recommendations.

Hailing the role of Telangana employees in the movement for separate statehood, the Chief Minister said that they did not even fear to face legal action to be part of the movement, including their historic participation in the ‘Sakala Janula Samme’ that went on for 42 days. “Thus the State owed a great deal to the employees for their resolve in the movement,” he said.

Stating that there were several anomalies and scale disparities in salaries, KCR announced that the Pradeep Chandra Committee would continue its work to look into such issues. The decision was taken without wasting much time as the Election Commission was likely to announce the schedule for Council elections anytime. In the event the pay revision would get postponed further on account of election code of conduct coming into effect, he explained.

Those who participated in the meeting included Pradeep Chandra-led high-powered committee members, parliamentary secretary Srinivas Goud, presidents and representatives from TNGOs’, TGOs’, Secretariat Employees’ Union, PRTU and Doctors’ Association.

Meanwhile, leaders of various employee unions congratulated the Chief Minister for announcing the PRC. TNGO president G Deviprasad thanked the chief minister for the gesture and called upon Telangana employees to strive hard for fulfilling the dream of ‘Bangaru Telangana’.

It may be mentioned here that employee associations have been demanding a fitment of 69.10 per cent fitment. The ninth PRC recommended 27 per cent fitment and 22 per cent IR while government after protracted negotiations offered 39 per cent fitment. Now the tenth PRC reportedly recommended 29 per cent while employees were already getting an IR of 27 per cent from January 1, 2014.