Central Government DA Hike: Employees of the central government are likely to receive good news in the beginning of new year, 2022, under the 7th Pay Commission. According to reports, the central government is expected to hike the dearness allowance of its workers yet again. This time, the employees of central government will get a hike of 3 per cent in their dearness allowance, the reports said. If these are believed to be true, all government employees are set to see a massive hike in their salary just at the beginning of the new year with the increase in the Dearness Allowance (DA).
According to a Hindi daily Prabat Khabar, which was quoted by India Today, the salary of central government employees will increase by up to Rs 20,000. Typically, the government raises the Dearness Allowance of central government employees two times each year — which is between January and July.
Dearness Allowance or DA is the cost-of-living adjustment allowance that the government pays to the employees of the public sectors, as well as pensioners who worked in the same sector. DA makes up for a large chunk of the gross salary of the employees of the public sector. It is mainly given to the employees to offset the impact of inflation. DA is not only paid in India, but in Bangladesh and Pakistan too.
As of now, central government employees are paid a Dearness Allowance of 31 per cent. The most recent hikes were given in July and October 2021, after a months-long freeze in the allowance due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In view of the pandemic, the Union Government had frozen the three additional installments of the DA and DR, which were due from January 1, 2020, July 1, 2020, and January 1, 2021.
It is also to be noted that during these hikes, the government did not pay the arrears to its employees given the pandemic situation.
In this regard, one should also note that the government has not given any statement regarding the likely hike and the news is only based on certain reports. There has been no official confirmation from the Centre’s side regarding this DA hike, nor has it announced when it will be implemented.
The Union Cabinet in October had hiked dearness allowance and dearness relief by 3 per cent to 31 per cent to benefit 47.14 lakh Central Government employees and 68.62 lakh pensioners. This was informed by Minister of Information & Broadcasting Anurag Singh Thakur.
Earlier in July, the government had restored the dearness allowance (DA) and dearness relief (DR) and increased the rate of allowance from 17 per cent to 28 per cent, after the long freeze.
Apart from the DA hike, there is another good news that central government employees should look forward to as the year ends. According to some reports, the Union government is holding discussions to raise the fitment factor. The salary of all public sector employees will increase in case the fitment factor is hiked.
The fitment factor was last hiked in 2016 for the central government employees. During that time, the basic salary of the employees were increased to Rs 18,000 from Rs 6,000. The government is now reportedly trying to raise the salary of the employees after a gap of six years. As per the reports, the fitment factor will be increased by 3.68 per cent. This means that there will be a hike of Rs 8,000, following which the basic salary will increase to Rs 26,000 for public sector employees.
Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here.
For all the latest business News Click Here
