Functioning of government departments and public sector undertakings was affected in the entire Jammu province today as employees began a strike against the “failure” of the administration in fulfilling their demands like release of arrears as per the 6th Pay Commission recommendations.

Employees struck work in response to a 4-day strike call given by the Employees Joint Action Committee (EJAC), official sources said here.

They were demanding release of arrears of 6th pay commission, 20 per cent hike in HRA, enhancement of retirement age from 58 to 60 years, removal of pay anomalies and regularisation of adhoc/temporary employees.

About 600 employees of different departments held a protest demonstration at SMGS Hospital here since 1000 hours.

The EJAC said the strike would continue till April 6 though a cabinet sub-committee has called its leaders for talks this evening.

Source : PTI

Hit by a shortage of officers, the government has decided to hire its retired employees to contribute in the conduct of the mammoth Census exercise covering 1.2 billion residents spread over 35 states and Union Territories.

The government has floated 695 temporary posts to be filled by retired central and state government employees in the ranks of Joint Director (Census operations) up to the level of data entry operators to function under the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India.

The retired employees will be hired on temporary basis, for six months, which can be extended, with an approximate salary (with additional travelling and dearness allowance) in the range of Rs 26,000 to Rs 12,000 in various ranks.

“For conduct of the 2011 Census, 695 temporary posts have been created for the Office of the Registrar General of India (ORGI) and its 33 directorates located in states and UTs for three years with effect from April 1, 2010.

“Action has been initiated to fill up the vacancies by promotion or deputation as the adequate number of eligible employees is not available in the feeder grades of most of the posts and completion of the process of selection on deputation will take considerable time,” the ORGI said in its letter to various ministries and government departments.

The letter said that it has been decided that as an interim measure retired central or state government servants may be engaged to fill up the position at various levels.

The maximum age limit for such retired officials to apply for the job has been kept at 67 and an employee once hired cannot be “engaged for a post which is higher than the post from where he has retired. However, he can be considered for a lower post,” the letter said.

The ORGI has floated the posts in various divisions and branches of Census operations like statistics, administration, map and geography research, printing, social studies, official language policy, data operators and stenographer.

The Census would cover all 640 districts, 5767 tehsils, 7742 towns and more than 6 lakhs villages in the country. More than 24 crore households will be visited and 1.20 billion people enumerated during this exercise. To carry out this massive exercise more than 2.5 million people will be engaged.

Source : Economic Times

A husb- and and a wife who are government employees are both entitled to house rent allowance if one of them is posted a “reasonable distance” away from the other, Calcutta High Court has said.

The government now offers the allowance to either the husband or the wife if the distance between their workplaces is less than 250km.

But the court today ask- ed the government to redraw the house rent allowance policy using a “reasonable dis- tance” instead of 250km as the cut-off.

The matter came up during the hearing of a case moved by a Murshidabad teacher whose husband works for the railways in Calcutta.

Since Shukla Das’s hus-band stays 225km from her school in Kandi, she is not entitled to her house rent allowance, according to the rule that came into effect following a circular issued in October 2007. “She stays in a rented house at Purandarpur but she doesn’t get any rent allowance as her husband is already getting it,” said her lawyer Kaushik Chanda.

Das welcomed the order. “I had repeatedly told the authorities that I deserved the allowance but nothing happened. So, I moved court earlier this month.”

Opposing the petition, government lawyer Kamalesh Jha had said: “Fixing the house rent allowance for government employees is an administrative decision and the court should not interfere in the matter.”

However, Justice Biswanath Somadder said: “As the transport system and infrastructure in our country are not so developed that an employee can travel 450km a day to attend his/her place of work and return home, the government should fix a reasonable distance from home to the workplace if it wants to give house rent to only one of them.”

Before the 2007 circular, all state government employees were entitled to house rent allowance.

“When the government realised that working couples were drawing double house rent but sharing the same accommodation, it adopted the existing policy. But the 250km norm was impractical,” said Chanda.

Source : The Telegraph India