Hyderabad: The retirement of state government employees is all set to impose a huge financial burden on the newly formed Congress government. The BRS government had enhanced retirement age of employees by three years, from 58 years to 61, in March 2021.
With this, no employees retired in the state since March 2021. They will start retiring in another three months, from March 2024. Over 44,000 employees are set to retire in the next five years. Each employee will get Rs.30 lakh to Rs.1 crore in the form of retirement benefits such as provident fund (PF), gratuity etc which the Congress government will have to deal with during its five-year term.
Data obtained from the finance department shows that in the March, 8,194 employees will retire. This will be followed by the retirement of 9,213 employees in 2025, 9,231 in 2026, 8,917 in 2027 and 8,496 employees in 2028.
In all, 44,051 employees will retire in the next five years for whom the state government needs to allot funds in the Budget to meet expenditure of retirement benefits.
The BRS had promised to enhance retirement age to 61 years in its election manifesto for 2018 Assembly polls. After retaining power for second term in December 2018, it remained silent on this issue for over two years and three months.
In March 2021, it decided to raise retirement age all of a sudden. It was widely believed in employees circles that the BRS government took this decision as it faced severe cash crunch due to Covid-induced financial crisis in 2020 and 2021.
This decision saved the BRS government from incurring huge expenditure on extending retirement benefits to employees for three years till its second term tenure ended in December 2023.
The salary and pensions bill of the state government will increase to Rs.55,925 crore in 2023-24, according to the White Paper on State's finances released by the Congress government in Legislative Assembly on Wednesday.
Of this, salaries account for Rs.40,109 crore and pensions for retired staff Rs.15,816 crore. Salaries and pension will alone account for 35 per cent of state's total revenue receipts.
At the time of formation of Telangana state in 2014, the salary and pensions bill was Rs.17,130 crore. By 2021-22, it increased to Rs.48,809 crore due to salary and pension hikes extended by BRS government in the last ten years.
In 2015-16, the BRS government announced highest fitment (hike in basic pay) of 43 per cent for staff and pensioners and again in 2021-22, it announced fitment of 30 per cent.
The White Paper released by the Congress government has revealed that the government is in dire straits due to alleged financial mismanagement of previous BRS government. The outstanding debt of the government shot up to over Rs.6.71 lakh crore from 2014 to 2023.
The tenure of the pay revision commission of employees and pensioners ended in July 2023 and employees are demanding constitution of new PRC to hike their salaries and pensions. The Congress had promised to constitute a new commission if voted to power. The wage bill of state government is set to rise further if new PRC scales are implemented.
