The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday approved the release of an additional instalment of dearness allowance (DA) to central government employees and dearness relief (DR) to pensioners from July 1, 2023.
The additional instalment represents an increase of four per cent over the existing rate of 42 per cent of the basic pay for the employees and of pension for the pensioners and is meant to compensate them against price rise. The revised percentage will be 46 per cent.
Advertisement
This increase is in accordance with the accepted formula, which is based on the recommendations of the 7th Central Pay Commission, the information and broadcasting minister, Anurag Thakur, said after the Cabinet meeting.
The combined impact on the exchequer on account of both DA and DR will be Rs 12,857 crore per annum. This will benefit about 48.67 lakh central government employees and 67.95 lakh pensioners.
The Cabinet also approved payment of productivity-linked bonus (PLB), equivalent to 78 days’ wages to 11,07,346 non-gazetted railway employees for 2022-23.
The eligible railway employees include track maintainers, loco pilots, train managers (guards), station masters, supervisors, technicians, technician helpers, pointsman, ministerial staff and other Group C staff (excluding RPF/RPSF personnel).
The total amount payable to the railway employees will be Rs 1968.87 crore. Thakur said the bonus was being paid to the employees in recognition of their excellent performance during the year.
The railways performance during 2022-2023 was “very good,” he said. The railways loaded a record cargo of 1,509 million tonnes and carried nearly 6.5 billion passengers.
There were many factors contributing to this record performance. These included improvement in infrastructure due to infusion of record capex by the government in railways, efficiency in operations and better technology.
The PLB payment will act as an incentive to railway employees to work towards further improvement in the performance, he said.
