VII Pay Panel: TN employees likely to get 20% interim relief

The official committee on implementation of 7th Central Pay Commission (CPC) submitted its report to Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, on Wednesday, based on its series of hearings with stakeholders.

Sources said that the government was considering the provision of an interim relief ranging between 15 and 20 per cent of its employees’ basic pay until the roll out of 7th CPC.

The relief is in the line of State’s decision to accord an interim relief of Rs 1,200 a month to the employees of State-run Transport Corporations until the signing of a new wage revision agreement.

The submission also comes in the wake of CM’s assurance of obtaining the report before this month end. The assurance came on September 4 to dissuade the Joint Action Council of Tamil Nadu Teachers Organisations and Government Employees Organisations (JACTTO-GEO) from launching an indefinite stir pressing a charter of demands after parleys between the forums’ representatives and the ministers failed.

The forum’s primary demands were implementation of old pension scheme, wage revision as per 7th Pay Commission, provision of interim relief in case of delay in wage revision, and normalisation of time-scale pay from special time-scale pay.

As parleys failed, a section of its employees went on a series of agitations across the State and its ripple effect was felt in the Secretariat where employees resorted to a flash strike. With the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court’s intervention, the stir came to an end as the court had directed the striking employees to report for work or to face action.

The committee led by K Shanmugam was instituted on February 22 and was originally supposed to table its report on June 30.

The terms of reference of the Committee were to go into the recommendations of the 7th CPC regarding the revised pay scales, pension, family pension and retirement benefit for the Central government employees and recommend for extending these benefits to State government employees, teachers and employees of local bodies.

It considered suggestions from recognised unions for employees and other associations before making its recommendations.