UP govt approves 6th pay commission; pay hike from next month

Lucknow, Nov 27 (UNI) In a major sop to about 1.5 million state employees, the Uttar Pradesh government today approved the recommendations of the high-powered committee on the sixth pay commission, to be implemented from next month.

The new pay scales would come into force with retrospective effect from January 1, 2006. The state government employees would start getting salaries with new scales from January 1, 2009 i.e December, 2008 salary.

The state cabinet in its meeting today accepted the report of the committee submitted to the government earlier this month.

Chief Minister Mayawati, addressing a press conference here, said the first report of the committee had already been accepted by the state cabinet, in which the government employees and the teachers of the government aided schools would be benefitted.

She said there would be a hike in the pension and family pension recommended in the sixth pay commission report.

The CM, however, said that 80 per cent of the arrears of the revised payscale of an employee would be deposited in the Provident Fund (PF) account, while the remaining 20 per cent would be paid in cash.

The Group Insurance of the employees have been raised to Rs one lakh, Rs two lakh and Rs four lakh from the existing Rs 30,000, Rs 60,000 and Rs 1.20 lakh respectively.

Similarly, the maternity benefit has been given at par with the central governemnt employees, while employees working in the city of only one lakh population would be eligible for city allowances.

The Chief Minister said the compensation for death during duty has been raised to Rs 10 lakh, while for death due to terrorists or extremist attacks would be Rs 15 lakhs. The-time bound revised payscale would now be effective ater 10, 20 and 30 years of service.

Earlier, a Committee headed by retired bureaucrat S A T Rizvi and Principal Secretary Alok Ranjan, Finance Secretary V N Dixit and Ajay Agarwal as its members submitted the first report to the government.

Chief Minister Mayawati had constituted the committee to study the modalities of implementation and subsequent implications, immediately after the Centre had made public the recommendations.

The state government would incur an additional burden of about Rs 14,000 crore towards arrears and pensions effective from January 1, 2006 besides over Rs 5,000 crore annual expenditure towards the salary, official sources told UNI here.

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