AMARAVATI: Political compulsions have forced the state government to make a retreat on switching to the Central Pay Commission (CPC) and promise to appoint state-level Pay Revision Commission (PRC).
The state has missed a golden opportunity to save a few million bucks on frequent revision of pay scales for the employees due to the cut-throat competition between the two strong regional parties-YSRC and TDP -to appease the organised sections among the electors.
Though chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy was willing to follow the states which have already moved to the CPC, the fear of main opposition TDP promising to appoint a state-level PRC made the government to go back and follow the state PRC model.
In fact, employees' unions have also agreed to CPC when the 23 per cent fitment was announced by the chief minister last month. However, the mishandling of House-Rent Allowance (HRA) slabs issue and recovery (adjustment) from the Interim Relief (IR) irked the employees' associations prompting them to join hands and harden their stance even on agreed terms and references.
Experts in the fiscal management matters are however worried about the growing salary bill of the state government employees. "Although employees always deserve better pay for better performance, salary bill should never go over and above your revenues. It will collapse the entire system," said noted economist Dr DAR Subramanyam.
He explained that either the state government work to improve its revenues or go for cut in the salary bill. "Since it is very difficult to go for the second option, the government should think out of the box to increase its revenues," he observed. While CPC recommended just 14.5 per cent fitment, state government paid nearly 27 per cent for about 30 months and agreed to pay 23 per cent fitment. In fact, it would be forced to implement another PRC in another 12-24 months while CPC comes into scene once in 10 years.
The state government appointed the last PRC headed by retired IAS officer Ashutosh Mishra in 2018 and hence the government would be forced to appoint the next PRC by 2023.
