Work to one who works and pay to one who doesn’t work

Shri H.S.Govardhana Rao, Superintendent of Cental Excise, Bangalore is the author this article. He can be contacted through this e-mail- parakirao@gmail.com.



Recently the Government has issued an OM vide F.No. 7/14/2010-E III (A) dated 05.07.2010 allowing revision of option exercised under rule 6 of Central Civil Services (Revised Pay) Rules, 2008 till 31.12.2010. Check this previous GConnect article to have details on this revised option.



No doubt the employees who got  MACP or promotion might get benefited out of this revision of option. I wonder whether it is going to be beneficial to employees whose date of increment falls between Feb 2006 to June 2006.



Consider the case where employees ‘X’ and ‘Y’ drawing the same pay (pre-revised) and getting their increments on 01-02-2006. If ‘X’ exercises the option to get his salary fixed on his increment date, i.e. 01-02-2006, no doubt he will be placed at a much higher level in the new pay band. But to get the first increment in the revised pay band he has to wait till July 2007. On the other hand, ‘Y’ opts and gets his pay fixed as on 01-01-2006 and gets his first increment in the new pay band on 01.07.2006. Now pay of ‘X’ will fall below that of ‘Y’. This is because the increment in the pre-revised scale is nowhere near the increment of 3% of the total salary in the revised scale. Hence it is not beneficial to ‘X’ and all others getting their pay fixed after drawing increment (pre-revised) in the month of March, April, May and June 2006 as the case may be.



It’s an irony here as even the employees who were on extra-ordinary leave due to certain specified reasons for a long period are not denied their increment. In fact those employees are granted increment by regularisation of their EOL period (Check this link to view the connected circular).



It seems, Government had chosen to follow the famous saying among CG community “Give Work to one who works and pay to one who doesn’t prefer to work”.



Jokes apart, the employees who had their increment date between Feb to Jund prior to 6CPC, are at a loss and a lot of injustice has been done to them without any fault on their part. In fact Government should have taken adequate steps, to ensure that nobody is at a loss while it started adopting fixed increment date in the place of variable one.



Yet it’s not too late as government can set right this anomaly by following one of these two measures.



In the case of those whose increment had fallen on the February 2006 to June, 2006 the pre-revised annual increment be pre-dated to 01.01.2006. This issue has already been discussed in the anomaly committee as per reports.

Fix the pay on the date of increment for February 2006 to June 2006 and also grant first increment in the revised pay band on 01-07-2006 duly waiving the qualifying service condition of six months for drawing increment as a onetime measure to rectify the anomaly.

The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and are not intended to represent the views of GConnect.

SOURCE GCONNECT