Required funds for matching Govt share not reflected in BE
Nishikant Khajuria
JAMMU, Sept 12: Hundreds of employees of Animal Husbandry Department, Jammu, who fall under the ambit of New Pension Scheme (NPS), are without salaries from the three months.
Even as the employees recruited under Old Pension Scheme are receiving their regular salaries, the NPS employees are suffering due to non-availability of matching Government share under salary budget.
While some districts have not paid salaries to NPS employees for the last three months, salaries were not paid last month in all the districts of Jammu province. Despite repeated pleas of the aggrieved employees, no concrete assurance has been given so far by the higher authorities for timely disbursal of salaries.
According to the sources, the Drawing and Disbursing Officers (DDOs) are not able to pay salaries because of non-availability of matching Government share for remittance of NPS contribution as the same was not projected by the top authorities while finalizing Budget Estimate for 2023-24.
Pertinent to mention that in the past also, these NPS employees have experienced significant delays in receiving their monthly salaries, sometimes extending up to three months. Their salaries for the month of July, August and September 2022 were paid in October 2022 while salaries for the month of October, November and December 2022 were paid in January 2023. Similarly salaries for the month of January, February and March were paid in April 2023.
“This irregular payment of salaries in past and now for the past 2-3 months has put us in precarious situation. We rely on our salaries to meet our basic needs, pay bills and support our families. The uncertainty caused by delay in salary has made it extremely difficult for us to fulfill our financial obligations, with banks making frequent calls for timely EMI payments,” said an aggrieved employee.
These employees further rued that their grievance catches little attention of the higher authorities and top leadership who receive salaries under OPS and don’t face such situation of salary delay.
Moreover, they added, NPS is a market linked scheme where the monthly contribution is invested in equity, bonds and other financial instruments under an umbrella of a single pension fund and the return is subject to performance of selected pension fund. The delay in disbursement of salaries and therefore delayed contribution to NPS account is causing financial loss to NPS subscribers as investment period gets reduced leading to less rate of return, they explained.
It may be recalled that Lt Governor Manoj Sinha had last year directed that in all cases, where the NPS contributions are deducted from the salary of the Government employee but the amount is not remitted to CRA system or is remitted late, the amount may be credited to the NPS account of the employee along with interest for the period from the date on which the deductions are made till the date the amount is credited to the NPS account of the employee, as per rates applicable to GPF from time to time, compounded annually. A notification by the Finance Department, vide Statutory Order (SO) 27, dated 21-01-2022, was issued in this regard.
However, there is no suitable provision when concerned authorities are not able to pay salaries leading to non remittance of NPS contribution for months altogether even as this problem arises from time to time.
When contacted, Principal Secretary, Agriculture Production Department, Shailendar Kumar told the Excelsior that Director Animal Husbandry (Jammu) has been asked to send demand for funds immediately.
“Salary has to be paid even if new recruitment requirements were not reflected by her during budget discussion while finalizing Budget Estimate for 2023-24 during October/November 2022,” he added.
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