In a populist move, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Saturday announced to set up the Sixth Punjab Pay Commission for the employees and pensioners of the State Government.
The Chief Minister took the decision during a meeting with the representatives of various associations of Governments, boards and corporations here.
Briefing the representatives of all employees’ unions present in the meeting, the CM said that the various modalities of Sixth Punjab Pay Commission including its composition, terms and conditions would be finalised by the State Personnel Department shortly. The new pay commission would be mandated to give recommendations with regard to new pay scales for the employees and revision in the pension for the pensioners/family pensioners of the State Government.
Conceding another demand of the state employees’ unions, the Chief Minister also announced that another installment of 6 per cent of Dearness Allowance (DA) for the government employees and pensioners/family pensioners due with effect from July 1, 2015 would be paid January 2016 onwards.
Regarding the payment of pending arrears of DA from January to June, 2015, Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa said that these would be paid within next two months.
He also clarified that all the bills related to the withdrawal of GPF of the employees has been cleared till August, 2015 and now the payment of GPF from September, 2015 onwards would be made soon by the Government treasuries.
The representatives of the employees’ unions appreciated Badal’s initiative to set up Sixth Punjab Pay Commission and urged him to resolve the other pending issues and demands of the employees on priority.
Besides Badal and Dhindsa, Principal Secretary Finance DP Reddy, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister SK Sandhu, Secretary Coordination KAP Sinha, Secretary Personnel Raji P. Srivastava, Additional Secretary Finance Gurneet Tej and Additional Secretary Coordination Neelima were present in the meeting.