West Bengal May Implement 6th Pay Commission From January 2020: Mamata Banerjee

The West Bengal government will accept the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission and is likely to implement it from January 1, 2020, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Friday. She blamed the erstwhile Left Front government for the delay in the implementation of the pay panel's recommendation as huge money is being spent to service the debt taken by it.

The implementation of the Pay Commission recommendations will cost the state exchequer about Rs 10,000 crore annually.

The Sixth Pay Commission was formed on November 27, 2015, months before the 2016 assembly election, to restructure the salaries of the state government employees.

The panel, which was headed by Prof Abhirup Sarkar, was scheduled to submit its report within six months. However, it got periodic extensions and the latest one for another six months came on May 28.

Speaking on the delay in the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations, Banerjee said she had received the report only on Friday.

"I have received the Pay Commission report. We will accept the recommendations of the Commission and sympathetically consider it," she said at the organisational meeting of TMC's West Bengal State Government Employees Federation.

The central government has already approved the Seventh Central Pay Commission. The Pay Commission recommendations include increase in the basic pay scale of state employees and increase of gratuity from Rs six lakh to Rs 10 lakh.

"The state government employees are demanding to make up the shortfall of dearness allowance. But it should be kept in mind that only the West Bengal government has a guaranteed pension scheme. The pension scheme of the central government is not guaranteed," she said.

"Few people during Lok Sabha elections have misguided you but all of you (state government employees) can trust me. I won't disappoint you," she said.

Lashing out at the Left trade unions and state government employees union, Banerjee said the erstwhile Left Front dispensation had implemented the Fifth Pay Commission two years after it was submitted in 2006. 

"The Left Front had taken huge debt and we are paying Rs 55,000 crore every year for it. It is due to its fiscal mismanagement that we are facing so much problems," she said.

The TMC supremo lambasted the Centre over the proposed mass layoff in public sector units like Air India and BSNL. She claimed that the BJP government is trying to disinvest and privatise all PSUs in the country.

"I ask the TMC trade union wing to organise a meeting with the central trade unions of Air India and BSNL on September 23. I will attend the meeting," she said.

Referring to mass layoff of journalists in various media houses in Bengal, she said talks are on between Calcutta Press Club and the state government to give Rs 10,000 as allowance to journalists who lose their jobs.