The Odisha Government is seriously working out ways and means as well as the timing to provide the new pay and pension scales to its employees and pensioners as per the Seventh Pay Commission’s recommendations.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik would take a final decision as to how soon the employees would receive their salary at the enhanced scale, sources said.
With the new pay and pension scales to be implemented with effect from January 1, 2016, there would be a substantial burden on the State exchequer.
Every year, the extra load would be of Rs 5,500 crore as has been estimated.
The impact would be more than Rs 9,000 crore as already 20 months have elapsed. How the Government would pay the backlog is now a point of examination by Finance Department officials.
But it is a fact that the employees would receive new pay scales before the Durga Puja, the sources revealed. “We hope it will be a Puja gift,” said a senior concerned official.
The employees of the other State Governments, besides those of the Union Government, have already received the enhanced pay packets with effect from January 1, 2016, he pointed out.
Earlier, Finance Minister Sashi Bhusan Behera had said the State Government has already received the Fitment Committee report on the new pay scales and was seriously examining it. The committee was set up under the chairmanship of the Development Commissioner.
The employees’ hopes of getting new pay packets have increased after the State Government entered into a new agreement with the IOCl on its dispute over taxation. The State Government is likely to get Rs 1,500 crore per annum from the IOCl’s Paradip Refinery even though it has to pay Rs 700 crore interest-free loan to the Central PSU.
So, the the State Government’s liquidity position would be better and there would be a cushioning for paying extra to its employees.