Himachal Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh on Tuesday announced seven per cent Dearness Allowance (DA) to the employees of the State Government. Presiding over a Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) meeting of State Employees Federation, he also announced enhancing the income limit to Rs1.50 lakh from the present Rs1.25 lakh for granting jobs on compassionate grounds.
The enhanced Dearness Allowance will be due from July 2014 and arrears will be deposited in the provident fund of employees upto March, 2015. This would put an extra burden of Rs300 crore on the State exchequer, said the CM. Singh said that the demands of the employees of the Rogi Kalyan Samitis would be considered sympathetically. “I always wished a single body of NGOs in the State and the efforts bore fruit as my only motive is to have a single employee body,” he said. He said now the State employees had come under the canopy of single employee federation.
He accused the previous government of adopting a policy of ‘divide and rule’ saying it divided the NGO body in several separate units which proved detrimental for the employees. Singh said that the then Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal announced sops in haste for the employees few months before the Assembly elections without pondering that it would put an extra burden of Rs1,300 crore over the State treasury, as a result of which the present state government, when took over had empty coffers.
Virbhadra Singh said the previous Government could not present its case properly before the 13th Finance Commission and as a result, the Commission grossly underestimated the committed liabilities of the State. The 13th Finance Commission had not even given an equal treatment to the State despite the fact that preferential treatment to a Special Category State like Himachal Pradesh was required to be given, asserted the Chief Minister. He expressed hope that the 14th Finance Commission will look into the financial aspects of the State considerately.
He said the State Government had always been considerate towards the demands of the employees despite financial constraints and had always been fulfilling their genuine demands. The State Government was committed to regularise the daily wagers in a phased manner and those who had completed seven years as daily wagers were being regularised. Similarly, the contractual employees completing six years in service were also being considered for regularisation.