Recent pay hikes will result in state spending half its revenue on salaries
Telangana CM K. Chandrasekahr Rao
Hyderabad: The Telangana government is worried about its salary bill. It has increased by Rs 7,000 crore since the state was formed and now stands at Rs 25,000 crore due to the 43 per cent fitment (salary hike) given to over 3 lakh government employees and pensioners, up from Rs 18,400 crore in June last year.
Though the hike, based on the 10th Pay Revision Commission recommendations was announced in February and hiked salaries were being paid from March 2015, it was made applicable from June 2014. The government is yet to pay arrears for the nine-month period from June 2014 to February 2015 due to financial problems.
Besides, 44 per cent fitment was given to nearly 57,000 RTC staff from June, which put an additional burden of Rs 800 crore per year. Though RTC salaries would be borne by the TSRTC, the government has to support the ailing corporation which is Rs 1,800 crore in the red. The salary bill will bloat further with the government planning to fill another 25,000 posts, for which the notifications are being readied. Finance department officials have estimated that the new recruitments will push up the salary bill by another Rs 900 crore, taking the total to nearly Rs 26,000 crore per annum. Nearly half of the revenue expenditure is already going towards salaries, leaving limited resources for the government to take up other schemes.
“Though the Tenth PRC had recommended a minimum salary of Rs 13,000 per month for the new recruits, several posts like engineers, doctors etc, command salaries which are more than double this amount. The average salary for a majority of the direct recruitment posts would be Rs 30,000 per month. Taking this into acco-unt, an additional Rs 900 crore is needed to pay salaries for the newly recruited 25,000 staff per year,” said an official.
Chief secretary Rajiv Sharma has been holding meetings with finance officials for the last three weeks to approve the 25,000 new posts to enable government to issue notifications. With 15 days left to meet the July deadline — set by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao during the State Formation Day celebrations last month — to issue job notifications, the officials have speeded up the process.
The state Cabinet has to approve these posts before the notifications are issued; the government is already coming under fire from students and unemployed youth for failing to issue a single job notification even after coming to power more than a year ago.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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