SHILLONG: The Fifth Pay Commission set up by the state government to increase the pay and other allowances of the government employees has been allotted one year period to complete its task.
It was on July 7 that the state cabinet approved the formation of the Fifth Pay Commission with former chief secretary P.J. Bazeley as chairman and former NEC secretary Uttam Kumar Sangma and former Education official L. Roy as members.
The trio has already accepted the task proposed by the state government, an official source said on Friday, while adding that the commission will have one year to complete its recommendations, but extension of one more month will be allowed if it is required.
There are as many 90,000 government employees including teachers of deficit schools and colleges in the state and the number of pensioners would be over 20,000.
The suggestion of the cabinet is to increase the pay either by 20%, 22% or 25 % which will have to be examined by the new pay commission.
However, the fourth pay commission headed by former IAS official K.K. Sinha had recommended 32% pay hike to the employees with effect from January 1, 2007.
Recently, the Seventh Central Pay Commission had recommended 23 per cent hike in salaries of the Central government employees. “The new state pay commission can even go beyond the suggestion of the state cabinet, the source added.
In case, the fifth pay commission recommends hike in the salary of state employees by 25 per cent, an additional Rs 100 crore more will have to be incurred per month by the State government from the current Rs 400 crore per month.
