Aakash Hassan
Jammu
Finance Minister Dr Haseeb Drabu told the state legislature on Wednesday that he bargained hard with the employees of the state government on the implementation of seventh pay commission. While praising the employees for their response, he eventually set the deadline for the new pay commission – April 2018.
J&K has an estimated 61,000 casual, seasonal, ad hoc, temporary, NYCs and various other categories of persons engaged in various departments without proper authorization. Drabu said his predecessors “engaged them without thinking about source of wages or remuneration for them” but the incumbent regime treats this problem as a social issue.
“I have a choice to make: either implement the 7th Pay Commission or regularize, in some manner, the estimated 61,000 casual and other workers who have been on the fringes from 10 to 20 years,” Dr Drabu said in his speech. “On grounds of economic and financial logic both have competing claims. Yet on social and moral grounds the case of the casual workers is a much more compelling and a heart rending one.”
In the course of the next financial year, Drabu said the process of regularization of the casual workers of various categories will start subject to a set of guidelines and objective criteria. The regularization will be on a contractual basis. The first category will be those who have given their land to the State Government on the promise of a job and have been left out so far. They will have to go through a process of documentation and verification which will be done by the General Administration Department, he said.
For the remaining categories, a Committee under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary is currently busy in formulation of various options to deal with the issue. During the course of the year, the Government will set out a policy with timelines for absorbing these people.
Drabu share his gratitude to employees fir supporting him on this. In reciprocation of the gesture of supporting a larger cause of the society, he announced in morally obligation, the implementation of 7th Pay Commission for Government employees from 1st April, 2018. The revised salary and DA will be paid to the employees from 30th April, 2018. Detailed modalities in this regard will be issued by Finance Department in due course of time.
Besides, he announced, in the run up to the 7th Pay Commission implementation, addressing the pay anomalies of employees which have remained unaddressed. He said he is appointing a group of knowledgeable professionals in the services matters to make recommendations to the committee constituted under the chairmanship of the Chief Secretary.
