Merge DA with basic pay for central staff: Congress
Sep 11, 2015 02:00 am, New Delhi : With the amount of dearness allowance payable to the central government employees going up to 119 percent of their basic pay, the Congress has said that the time has to come merge the two.
“If the government of the day denies this demand of the employees, then it would be a big injustice to them,” said Congress spokesperson and former union minister Ajay Maken who also represented a Lok Sabha constituency in the past that has a strong section of these employees as voters.
He said that a pay commission normally orders a 40 percent hike in the basic pay.
“Currently the situation is that for a basic pay of Rs.100, the DA is Rs.119. Now if the pay revision is 40 percent the employees shall gain Rs 40 only, but if the basic pay and DA are merged then the gain would be 40 percent of Rs.219- i.e.Rs.84,”he added.
Maken said that a committee appointed by the government had recommended that once the DA crosses 100 percent of the basic pay, then the two should be merged.
The Congress leader also demanded that in view of the high rate of call drops the private telecom operators should be directed to provide an across the board rebate to all customers in the monthly bill.
“The normal call drop rate is 2 percent, but now the papers circulated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) show that it is as high as 17 percent, so the mobile users must be compensated,” he demanded.
He charged that the government was protecting the private telecom companies in spite of the poor quality of service. : The investments in infrastructure that should be made by these companies are not forthcoming and the quality of service is deteriorating,” he added.
Source:- free press journal
