Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala Government won't be disbursing from April 1 the arrears on account of pay revision to government employees and teachers. The State had promised to clear the dues by commencing the payment of dues with the start of the new fiscal year.
The Finance Department has issued an order to postpone indefinitely the crediting of the first instalment of pay revision arrears to their Provident Fund accounts, citing a severe financial crisis.
As per an order of the Pay Revision Commission, the Government hiked the salary of employees and teachers in March 2021 with a retrospective effect from July 1, 2019.
The assurance was that the arrears from July 2019 to March 2021 will be credited to their PF accounts in four instalments, on April 1 and October 1 in 2023 and 2024. As per this, the first instalment was slated to be released tomorrow (April 1).
In a high-level meeting attended by the Finance Minister and Finance Secretary on Wednesday, the officials made it clear that in the event of distributing the arrears, there wouldn’t be sufficient funds to pay the salary and pension the next month. Recently, Finance Minister K N Balagopal himself stated that the Government was staring at a bigger financial crisis next year than that it faced this time.
The employees and pension beneficiaries, however, hope that the Government would at least make part payment of the arrears with the Lok Sabha election coming up next year.
Besides salary revision arrears, two instalments of pension revision arrears are also pending. The Government had earlier informed that the leave surrender amount would be credited to PF accounts instead of providing it directly, and the same should be withdrawn only after four years. Similarly, the 7th salary revision arrears of university and college teachers, too, have been frozen.
