Vijayawada: Uncertainty prevails on clearance of wage bills of lakhs of employees and pensioners for January as the stand-off continues on implementation of revised pay scales as per recommendations of the 11th Pay Revision Commission.
The drawing and disbursing officers of government departments prepare wage bills towards the last week of every month and submit to the respective treasury and pay and accounts offices for verification and approval. Once the wage bills are approved, the money is remitted into the bank accounts of employees and pensioners through the CFMS.
With the government implementing revised pay scales from July 1, 2018, pay fixation is to be computed with the then basic pay, dearness allowance of 30.392 and 23 per cent fitment. Once the pay is fixed, it will be fitted to the pay scale and five DAs of 20.02% and HRA of 16% in case of urban centres and secretariat employees and eight per cent to those from towns will be added for the January 2020 pay.
Though all computation is to be computer generated, the DDOs, treasury and pay and accounts staff and beneficiary employees and pensioners have to check whether all calculations are carried out properly.
Sources say that the government has reportedly removed all old data pertaining to wages and pensions from the software application and fed the revised scales as per the GO issued on 11th PRC. With this, though the employees intend to take wages in the previous scale and both the treasury and pay and accounts officials are ready to clear the bills, no data is available.
The ball is in the court of treasury and pay and accounts employees as they are unwilling to process and approve revised scales of pay and this may result in the employees and pensioners getting delayed wages and pensions for January.
The employees allege that the state government is mounting immense pressure upon them to process pay fixation, confirm pay scales, submit wage bill as well as verification and updation of service registers and other measures in a bid to make the employees accept its revised scales of pay. However, they caution that if such works are taken up in a hurried manner it may result in several mistakes.
Some employees from urban centres like Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam have alleged that their HRA has come down to 16 per cent from 20 per cent and those working at Secretariat from Hyderabad claim that it has come down to 16 per cent from 30 per cent while those working in towns to get only eight per cent from 20 per cent.
One of the employees said, “As we are unwilling to accept new wages and data of our old wages is not available online, we are prepared for a delay by several days. We want the state government to resolve the issue expeditiously for the good of all.”
