New Delhi : The Central Government employees may get the allowances at new rates from April 1 that were put on hold at the time of implementation of the Seventh Central Pay Commission recommendations in June last year.
A committee headed by Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa constituted to propose modifications in the allowances recommended by the Pay Commission has submitted its report to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and now the Department of Expenditure is examining them before placing them before the empowered committee of secretaries set up to screen the pay commission report.
Indications are that the proposed revised allowances will go before the Cabinet early June for its approval. Unlike the pay-scales that are effected retrospectively, the latest implemented from January 1, 2016, the allowances are paid prospectively. They may be, therefore, implemented from July 1, if not from April 1, the finance ministry sources said.
One of the major recommendations of the Lavasa committee is to restore the house rent allowance (HRA) to 30% of the basic pay in the cities with over 5 million population instead of 24% recommended by the pay commission.
The government had to set up the committee to review the recommendations on the allowances because of the employees’ organisations registering strong protest over the pay commission seeking to strike out many allowances the employees were enjoying for decades.
On the basis of the representations for modifications in respect of 79 allowances, the committee held over a dozen rounds of meetings and also interacted with the standing committee of national council and the joint consultative machinery, beside giving hearing to various staff associations of railways, postal employees, doctors, nurses, defence and the department of atomic energy.
