Rise in pension age, five-day week mooted
The state government, which wants to ensure a smooth passage for the Right to Service Act this assembly session, plans to raise the pension age to 58 and introduce the five-day week, without increasing daily working hours.
These are incentives planned to lessen the opposition of government employees towards the Right to Service Act.
Once the Act is passed, the public pressure on employees to deliver services will be enormous.
“The Bill has provisions even to impose penalty on employees for improper service.
So to carry employees along, the Government has agreed to meet some of their demands,” a top Finance Department official said.
The official said employee organizations wanted pension age to be raised to 60.
The change in working conditions, a five-day week for instance, is also expected to cut Government expenses considerably.
The Planning Commission had asked the Government to cut down non-Plan expenditure by 10 percent.
The Government attempts to achieve this by curtailing administrative expenses. Cost-cutting will affect officials from additional secretary and above.
The Finance Department’s major recommendations include: ministers and officials shall travel economy class; they will be barred from staying in hotels three-star and above; discontinue reimbursing of mobile bills; officials will have to bear the cost of travel to attend national and international seminars; and no new posts should be created.
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