All India Services : Low grade may affect promotions of Govt. servants

Government servants will have to go the extra mile to earn good grades for getting promotions as a score below four in the 1-10 range could hamper their prospects.

A new system of Performance Appraisal of numerical gradings brought out by the Personnel Ministry says that members of the All India Services graded below four will be given a score of zero.

Members of the service graded between eight and 10 will be rated as 'outstanding' and will be given a score of nine for the purpose of calculating average scores for empanelment and promotion.

Those graded between six and short of eight will be rated as 'very good' and will be given a score of seven and those in the bracket of four and short of six will be rated as 'good' and given a score of five.

The Ministry gave these guidelines in a letter to Chief Secretaries of all states and Union Territories.

The guidelines have been issued in view of the fact that there was wide disparity in awarding numerical grading among reporting authorities in the absence of commonly understood benchmark.
Source : The Hindu.
View the Govt. Letter here.

Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Ltd (GUVNL) associations sign MoM on Pay Panel suggestions

All eight associations of the Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Ltd (GUVNL) have approved the memorandum of minutes (MoM) with the GUVNL management over implementing the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission for its employees.

All Gujarat Vidhyut Kamdar Sangh (AGVKS) was the first to sign the MoM. Following this, other associations signed it on June 4.

The GUVNL has sent the MoM to the state government’s finance department for its approval. Girish Joshi, general secretary, AGVKS, said, “Every one has signed the MoM and we expect some decision from the government soon.” The AGVKS has appealed the government to issue the final orders as soon as possible.

Earlier, the union rivalry had put the process on hold. As per sources, the GEB Engineers’ Association was not happy with the hike in the employees’ salaries and it had suggested some changes.

After the government approves the draft, it will be sent to the GUVNL board. It will be implemented only after the GUVNL board approves it.

As per the new MoM, the employees’ allowance has been hiked by 1 per cent. The net pay, which was reduced in the revised MoM, has also been restored up to 75 per cent. Besides, the incentive scheme in which the employee contribution was earlier four per cent against the company contribution of 2 per cent, has been revised and made 4 per cent for both the parties. The corpus will now be of 8 per cent.

AGVKS is the largest GUVNL association with more than 26,000 supporting employees.

Source : Indian Express.

Tamilnadu government orders 6th pay commission scales

Tamilnadu Govt has released order for implementation of sixth pay commission scales to it's employees, this was announced by Finance Secretary, Mr K. Gnanadesikan.

Revised pay-scales, effectively a hike of about 25 per cent and a doubling of allowances, will benefit over 12 lakh State Government employees and over 6 lakh pensioners and family pensioners.

• Additional outgo of Rs 5,155.79 crore (from Rs 21,000 cr to 26,000 crore)
• Effective notionally from January 1, 2006
• Monetary benefit accruing from January 1, 2007
• Arrear payout of Rs 11,093 crore to be paid in three equal annual instalments beginning from the current year.

Now over 45 per cent of the State’s annual revenue of Rs 59,000 crore would be spent on salaries and pensions.

View the Govt. Orders here.

Clarification regarding Leave Encashment on LTC for Central Govt. Employees.

Central Government employees are permitted to encash earned leave upto 10 days at the time of availing Leave Travel Concession subject to the condition that earned leave of at least an equivalent duration should be availed of by the employee simultaneously.

While facility of LTC is also admissible while availing Casual Leave, employees who are proceeding on LTC after availing leave other than earned leave could not encash their leave availed for LTC as the this procedure allows encashment only for earned leave when LTC is availed.

Now it has been decided by Government to allow encashment of earned leave upto 10 days at the time of availing LTC without any linkage to the number of days and the nature of leave availed while proceeding on LTC.

View the Govt order dated 03.06.2009 in this regard.

Defence Pension : One rank-one pension report by month-end

The UPA Govt has now promised tp resolve the long standing issue by this month end.
In her address to the joint sitting of Parliament on Friday, President Pratibha Patil said the committee headed by cabinet secretary K M Chandrasekhar had "already commenced its work and expects to complete it by the end of June 2009''.

Just before the crucial fourth phase of polling on May 7, the defence ministry had declared that a high-level committee headed by the cabinet secretary had been constituted to "reduce the gap in the pensionary benefits to officers and jawans, bringing it as close to OROP as possible''.

But slapped with a notice from the Election Commission for violating the model code of conduct, the government had swiftly backtracked and denied that the government has constituted any special committee for the purpose.

The grouse of ex-servicemen is that all political parties have used OROP to garner votes but have never implemented it after coming to office. The government had obviously announced the setting up of the committee to counter the BJP's strong `Jai Jawan' tune in its manifesto.

The defence community of 14 lakh serving and 23 lakh retired military personnel, after all, swells into a sizable votebank of around 1.5 crore people if family members are taken into account.

The UPA government, however, is promising only a partial implementation of OROP at best, with the defence ministry itself acknowledging that full implementation is simply not feasible "administratively''.

The defence ministry, however, admits that a case does exist for bringing the quantum of pension of pre-January 1996/October 1997 pensioners at par with post-January 1996/October 1997 and pre-January 2006 ones because the gap between the pensions of past and present retirees has considerably widened after the 6th Pay Commission.

This will entail an additional financial burden of only around Rs 500-600 crore annually, with the government keen to reduce the present four categories of pensioners to only two broad ones of pre and post January 2006 retirees.

"Full OROP implementation, in turn, could mean an annual outgo of around Rs 1,200-1,300 crore, apart from payment of arrears in the range of Rs 4,000 crore,'' said an official.
Source : The Times of India.