7th pay commission: Good news for teachers announced, govt employees may also get one soon

Keeping in mind the recommendations of the seventh pay commission, a good news has been announced for the teachers of staff of Executive Council of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University (SMVDU). According to media reports, the retirement age of SMVDU teachers has been raised to 65 year. An approval of grant of pay scales for them has also been signed. SMVDU is a university based in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. 

According to PTI report, the decision for SMVDU teachers were taken by the university's council, which met under the chairmanship of its chancellor and state Governor N N Vohra yesterday.

Reportedly Vohra stated that, to attract well-known teachers to serve the university, the council also decided to grant children education allowance and performance linked awards to the faculty.

SMVDU has been ranked 94th by  National Institutional Ranking Framework (Ministry of Human Resources Development) for the year 2018. 

The latest development came amidst the confusion prevails that whether the government would fulfil long term demand of around 50 lakh government employees of minimum salary hike or not. The employees have been demanding to raise the minimum basic pay to Rs 21,000 instead of Rs 18,000-what the seventh pay commission has recommended. 

Currently, the Central government employees are getting basic pay according to the fitment formula of 2.57 of the basic pay and if this big step is taken, it will come as a massive news for the Central government employees. 

Fitment factor is a figure used by 7th CPC with which the basic pay in 6th CPC regime (i.e Pay in Pay band + Grade pay) is multiplied in order to fix basic pay in revised pay structure (i.e 7th CPC). Fitment factor formulated by 7th CPC is 2.57.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that now that the union finance minister Arun Jaitley is back, the decision of increasing retirement age of the central government employees on the lines of Madhya Paradesh could happen soon. 

According to Sen Times report, the government is mulling over increasing the salaries of the central government employees before the 2019 General elections in a bid to get their support. 

Not only this, the report also claims that following the footsteps of the Madhya Pradesh government, the Centre is also likely to increase the retirement age of the central government employees from 60 to 62 years.

“Taking a leaf from Chouhan ahead of general elections next year, The BJP-led central government is mulling to implement the pay hike for central government employees,” a senior government official told the Sen Times.