AGARTALA, Dec 24 (TIWN): The Govt. Employees Federation, largest non-CPM employees' union, will hold a two-day convention from January 2 to decide upon a strategy to elicit its pending demands. This has been announced during a press meet held on Thursday.

It's to be mentioned here that the state govt. employees and pensioners are still deprived of financial benefit. The state government had constituted a one-man(Manik) pay review committee to mould the recommendations to suit the purpose of deprivation. Over two lakhs government employees of Tripura are agitated over the denial of dearness allowance (DA) on a equality with their counterparts with the central pay.

The implementation of the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission from January 1, 2016, the gap between state and central employees would be "unbridgeable".

The Karmachari Federation, largest non-CPM employees' union, will hold a two-day convention from January 2 to decide upon a strategy to elicit its pending demands.

"As it is the pay being given to the employees of Tripura are the lowest in the country because of consistent deprivation of the Left Front government. At the moment the gap in the DA paid to state and central employees is a whopping 45 per cent as the state's employees draw DA of 74 per cent while central employees draw monthly DA of 119 per cent," said the secretary general of the federation, Samar Roy.

Lashing out at the "anti-employee policies" of the state government, Roy said the state govt employees would have got central pay way back in 2009 but the government had given "evasive" replies to two successive letters from the then PMO asking for information on the quantum of money required to implement the central pay scale.

More than 60,000 pensioners, in the meantime, continue to remain deprived because of non-processing and calculation of their dues by CAG and State Bank of India, Guwahati.

"Actually, the service books of those who retired after December 31, 2005 are to be processed and calculated by the CAG and they have told they will finish the job by March 2016 but those who had retired before January 1, 2006 are in dire straits as their dues have to be calculated by the SBI regional office in Guwahati," said the secretary of the pensioners' committee, K.P. Dam.

It is more alarming for State Govt Employees that  the state finance department has not taken any initiative to clear the grade pay dues to the pensioners or taken up the issue with CAG or SBI authority.