Dearness allowance hiked, to cost Telangana Rs 100 crore

Hyderabad: The Telangana state government on Thursday hiked employees’ dearness allowance (DA) by 3.144 per cent of basic pay on Friday. The hike will be applicable from January 1, 2016.

DA has now increased from 15.196 per cent to 18.340 per cent. The increase will benefit about 3.50 lakh employees and two lakh pensioners in the state but will impose a burden of nearly Rs 100 crore per month on the state government. The state government revises DA every six months. But this time, it was delayed by more than eight months, which had led to some bitterness among employees.

TS employees’ association had been taking up the issue with K. Chandrasekhar Rao for the last two months. Mr Rao recently directed the finance department to issue orders to this effect as early as possible.

DA arrears to be added to GPF
The DA will be paid in cash with the salary of September 2016, payable on October 1, 2016. The arrears on account of payment of DA for the period from January 1, 2016, to August 31, 2016, will be credited to the General Provident Fund account of the employees.

However, in the case of employees who are due to retire on or before December 31, 2016, , the arrears of DA will be drawn and paid in cash as the employees due to retire on superannuation are exempted from making any subscription to the GPF in the last four months of service.

Employees who were appointed to government service on or after September 1, 2004, and are governed by the contributory pension scheme (CPS), 10 per cent of DA arrears will be credited to their PRAN accounts along with the government?s share as per the existing orders, and the remaining 90 per cent of DA arrears shall be paid in cash.

In respect of fulltime contingent employees, who are not eligible for GPF accounts, the arrears may be paid in cash. In the event of death of any employee before the issue of these orders, the legal heirs will be entitled to the DA arrears in cash.