What CG Employees can Expect from the 7th Pay Commission

What CG Employees can Expect from the 7th Pay Commission – Unlike in the private sector, the pay hike in government is a once-in-10-years-affair, making every CPC, right from the first that submitted its report in 1947, a hugely powerful agency.

Welcome to the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring before the 7th CPC Pay Hike. With a new pay scale for Central government employees, and also pensioners, likely to come into effect from January 1, 2016, the officers and non-gazetted staff of various services have been lobbying hard to get a good deal from the 7th CPC.

Unlike in the private sector, the pay hike in government is a once-in-10-years-affair, making every CPC, right from the first that submitted its report in 1947, a hugely powerful agency. No doubt, government employees have to undergo an annual appraisal process called Annual Performance Appraisal Report (APAR), but that exercise is important only for promotion, and not for any pay hike. Government employees do get a regular hike in dearness allowance, a measure meant for offsetting inflationary pressure on their earnings, but at the end of the day it is the CPC that fixes their pay for 10 long years.

Reliable sources indicate, The Seventh Pay Commission is likely to propose a pay hike for central government employees, which will be the highest since first pay commission’s proposal in 1947. ‘Every government employee, normally has a six member family including parents. So, Seventh Pay Commission is likely to increase salaries and allowances to minimise the impact on the cost of living for 50 lakh central government employees and 56 lakh pensioners including dependents’.

Dearness Allowance always merges with salaries and allowances under every pay commission’s proposal.The central government employees will get Dearness Allowance likely 125 percent at the time implementation of Seventh pay Commission. The Central Government employees have never got such type of Dearness Allowance hike before implementation of any Pay Commission.

But there is a catch, ‘Five to six per cent annual pay hike of Central Government employees is likely to be linked to tangible performance criterion. Under-performers are likely to be retired by 55 or 30 years of service’ says reliable sources.

However, there is doubt and fear in the minds of Central Government employees. How the performance will be monitored?

An employee in anonymous condition had this to say, and it is just too. “If annual increment is on the basis of performance,  then the master & slave system will be reopened in Government sectors. The performance reporter will utilise their subordinate officials in the way they wish. Corrupt officials will become more corrupt. The field unit staffs may be utilised for their personal works. Some posts in the Government are, to sit and wait for orders to carry out. In this case, no inputs means no output.  How the performance report will be prepared? Question of Very Good and Outstanding does not arise in their performance reports. In that case, employee will be deprived of getting the annual increment”.

The 7th Pay Commission is headed by Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur and Meena Agarwal is the secretary of the Commission. Other prominent members are Vivek Rae, a retired IAS officer of 1978 batch and Rathin Roy, an economist.

Source: TST