21 Nov : The government on Thursday announced doubling of pay-packages of executives of Central Public Sector Enterprises, benefiting some 3.78 lakh employees and entailing an additional burden of Rs 9,000 crore on the state-owned firms.
"The average increase in the compensation package of the executives will be 96 percent," Minister of Heavy Industry and Public Enterprises Sontosh Mohan Dev told reporters in New Delhi on Thursday.
The Union Cabinet approved the proposal to increase the pay scales of the Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) executives based on 2nd Pay Revision Committee recommendations.
The Committee was headed by retired judge of Supreme Court Jagannadha Rao."This is the best-ever package given by any government to the CPSE executives and will prevent attrition," he said, adding that the new pay scales would come into effect from 1st January, 2007.
Dev also felt that "this will substantially eliminate the differential of pay between the public sector and the private sector".Under the revised pay scales, monthly salary of a top ranking CPSE official could go up to Rs 31,500.
The benefits, however, would be much more after taking into account other allowances.Implementation of the new pay-scales would increase the wage bill of the CPSEs from Rs 13,000 crore to Rs 22,000 crore per annum, he said.
The minister further said that 76 profit-making CPSEs would be able to implement the new pay-scales fully, while the other 75 would implement the package partially, he said, adding the implementation would be linked to the performance of each CPSE.
Dev further said that an Anomalies Committee had been constituted to look into the problems faced by CPSE employees.On the pay-scale revision, the Cabinet relied on the recommendations of the Committee of Secretaries to classify
PSUs into four categories – A, B, C and D, instead of five categories -A+, A, B, C and D, as recommended by the Rao Committee in May.The chairman of ‘A’ category PSU would now be eligible for Rs 80,000 to Rs 1,25,000 pay scale as against Rs 18,500 to 23,900 currently.
There are 247 CPSEs, of which 217 are in operation.In all, 16,14,000 are employed in these concerns, of which 12,36,000 are unionised workmen, who negotiate their wages directly with their respective companies.
Spl Accelerated road Development Programme for North-East
The cabinet has also approved a Special Accelerated Road Development Programme for North-East. Under this scheme an alternate highway will be constructed between Siliguri to Gangtok.
Union Cabinet has decided to implement 6 Handloom, Powerloom and Handicraft clusters through Private-Public Partnership model in different places across the country.
CCEA awards 44 oil and gas blocks The Government has awarded 44 out of the 45 oil and gas blocks that received bids under NELP VII.
Petroleum Secretary R S Pandey said the CCEA did not approve the award of one block in western offshore as it received a single bid which was considered too low.
Before publishing erroneous news, one should go through the fact of the matter. The pay package is not doubled, rather the basic pay is doubled, that too, after merging of 68.8% DA. For example, 17500 has been converted to 36600 including 68.8% DA. Now, you can calculate benefit like this: 36600-17500-12040 =7060, which is fitment benefit. In the last revision (1997) also, fitment benefit at this level of scale was in the order of 7000+. Can the value of Rs.7000 be the same as that of 1997?