7th Pay Commission: After no pay hike, here is more bad news for CG employees

The bad news after the 7th Pay Commission does not seem to end for the Central Government employees. There has been one bad news after another for the CG employees which has left them dejected and demoralised.

It was termed as the worst in history. Moreover, the CG employees were unhappy with the pay hike.

Then came an assurance from Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley who said that the anomalies would be looked into. A National Anomaly Committee was formed to look into the issue. However, the Department of Personnel and Training later said that pay hike and fitment factor are not an anomaly.

Then later there was a clarification that both pay hikes and fitment factor are an anomaly. This brought some cheer for the CG employees who had hoped for some good news on the pay hike.

When things were about to look up, the Centre crashed all hopes of the employees. Minister of State for Finance P Radhakrishnan said that the Modi government was not considering a hike in minimum pay and fitment factor beyond the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission.

“The minimum pay of Rs 18,000/- per month and fitment factor of 2.57 is based on the specific recommendations of the 7th Central Pay Commission in the light of the relevant factors taken into account by it. Therefore, no change therein is at present under consideration,” said MoS for Finance P Radhakrishnan in his reply to the Upper House of Parliament.

He was replying to a question by Samajwadi Party lawmaker Neeraj Shekhar in which he asked, “whether Government is actively contemplating to increase minimum pay from Rs 18,000/- to Rs 21,000/- and fitment factor from 2.57 to 3, in view of resentment among Central Government employees over historically lowest increase in pay by 7th Central Pay Commission.”

Meanwhile, in another development, an Office Memorandum has been issued in which the pay anomaly definition has been amended. This would allow the NAC to take any decision relating to pay anomaly.

The bad news, however, did not end here. The Centre made yet another big announcement. Minister of State for Personnel, Jitendra Singh said that there is no plan to raise the retirement age of CG employees. The demand was to raise the retirement age from the existing 60 to 62 years. Singh said that this was communicated in a written reply to a question as to whether the government planned to change the retirement age of its staff.