Bhopal, Mar 25: A large section of Central Government employees on Tuesday protested against the sixth pay declared by the Central government on Monday. According to a press statement issued here on Tuesday, the employees of Income Tax, Postal Department, Geological Survey of India, Archaeological Survey of India, GPO, Census and other offices came out and raised slogans against the 6th pay scale in front of their respective offices. Yashwant Purohit, PV Ramachandran, TKR Pillai, SC Jain, RP Patel, Mehmood Hassan, JR Yadav, SK Sen and DK Haldar addressed the demonstrators, the release added.

Meanwhile, the Confederation of Central Government Employees and Workers has called upon the Central government employees throughout the country to organize demonstration on Wednesday to register their emphatic protest over the totally unacceptable recommendations of the 6th CPC. It also called upon the sister organisations to unitedly fight to bring about a decent wage settlement for the Central Government Employees.

According to the leaders, the Pay Commission has fixed the minimum wage at Rs 5740 only. The Central govt employees had demanded the fixation of minimum wage as per the norms formulated by the 15th ILC which works out to Rs 10,000 pm. The computation has been rejected by the Commission on untenable and unsustainable grounds. Had the minimum wage been computed on the basis of the norms laid down by the 5th pay commission, ie the percentage increase of the Net National Product over a period of ten years, which the Govt had accepted in 1997, the minimum wage should have been determined at Rs 7400. Thus the minimum wage determined by the 6th CPC is even less than what had been recommended by the 5th CPC and accepted by the then Government as fair and reasonable. The Pay Commission has gone on record to state that no comparison could be made to the wages obtaining in the Public Sector Undertaking.

The real ratio between the minimum and maximum wages have been raised from 1:11.76 (determined by the 5th CPC) to 1:15.68. While huge rise in emoluments have been provided to the senior officers of the Government, the Group B, C and D employees have been totally neglected, they added.

The Commission has recommended to withdraw the benefit of merger of DA granted to the Govt employees in 2004. The new fixation of pay in the revised scales of pay will be by disregarding this benefit. The proposed 40% fitment benefit will thus be reduced to 28%, when the actual fixation takes place.

Another suggestion is to replace the existing ad hoc and productivity linked bonus with performance related incentive. The Commission has inter alia suggested for the reduction of holidays from 17 to 3 without compensatory increase in the number of restricted holidays. The present health care system under the CGHS is to be replaced by the Medi-insurance for the new entrants. The pension scheme presently in vogue for those who are recruited prior to 1st April 2004 has not been extended to the new entrants while they are perforce to contribute 10% of their salary for the new contributory Pension scheme. No doubt the Commission has kept its promise of submitting its report within the prescribed time frame and recommended that its suggestion should be made effective from January 1, 2006.