Cadre Promotees Upset Over Pay Disparity

The government is coming under increasing pressure from middle-rank officials who feel that they have been short-changed in favour of direct recruits in the fifth pay commission report.

If accepted, the pay commission report will result in direct recruits in certain classes of service getting more salary than those who have reached the same stage through promotions from the lower cadre. In fact, a direct recruit in the section officer cadre will stand to earn more than another official who has been holding this position for the last seven to eight years.

Affected employees say that fixing salary scales for employees in the Rs2000-3500 bracket goes against the commission's principal about equal pay for the same kind of work. We are not going to allow the cabinet committee to approve the report in toto because it is clearly biased against direct recruits, the leaders of some of the staff unions, said.

Among those who fall in this category of employees include section officers in different ministries, besides those in feeder services in the departments of railways and post & telegraph and information officers of the press information bureau. The employees in this category are being placed in the scale of 6500-10500. Direct recruits in allied services like railways, post and telegraph and information services are currently in the scale of 2200-4000. They will now move into the new scale of Rs 8000-13500.

Currently, a direct recruit gets a higher basic salary of Rs 200 compared to an employee reaching the same level