The Central Institute for Mines and Fire Research (CIMFR) , a research wing of CSIR, has started recovery of project honorarium distributed among its employees.
The recovery started from both serving and retired employees from the current (August) month pay or pension depending upon the individual employee status .
The distributed sum runs in crores and both serving and retired employees have to pay back in installments,according to an office order issued by the organization.
The deduction is up to50 per cent of basic pay depending upon category of employee.
While the category Band C employees have to pay back 20% of basic per month till the entire sum they received is adjusted.
In case of category A employees who received up to Rs 20 lakhs the deduction is up to 40 per cent of basic pay and those who received more than that amount it's 50 per centasic pay.
However, in case of any employee retires ahead of adjustment of total sum he had received, the adjustment would be done from his gratuity and leave encashment ,the office order mentions .
It's worth mentioning that The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR ) had put hold on distribution of honorarium among the employees of CIMFR besides all other research wings and laboratories after suspected misuse of funds when it came to fore earlier this year.
The director general (CSIR)also had directed all those employees who have been awarded honorarium against research projects to refund the gross payments that were made to them by March 31 / 2021in this regard but most of the employees had not refunded the sum.
The issue had come to fore owing to a RTI made by activist Ramesh Rahi who had sought details of honorarium paid to the employees of the laboratories under the CISR.
It has come to fore that in some cases the honorarium realised by the employees were much much higher than their annual pay compensation that they were paid as government employees of any of the laboratory.
In one case an employee was paid over Rs 20 crores as honorarium in a year .
Rahi said , when the scientists are getting hefty pay compensations from the government for their research work besides other government benefits, realising honorarium appears to be a gross financial irregularity.