After Telangana, Andhra too defers salaries of government employees

the urgency of the matter, the High Court decided to prepone hearing in a suo motu case registered by it to deal with the challenges posed by COVID19 pandemic.

HYDERABAD: Following the footsteps of Telangana government, Andhra Pradesh late on Tuesday night announced deferment of salaries to its employees, including the Chief Minister, Cabinet Ministers and IAS officers.

In an order issued around midnight, Chief Secretary Nilam Sawhney said that the imposed lockdown have “completely dried-up” state’s revenue streams.

The deferments will range from 10 to 100 per cent for different categories of employees.

While the Chief Minister, Ministers and Legislators will get a cut of 100 per cent, the IAS, IPS, IFS and all-india service officers will get 60 per cent cut, the class 2 and class 3 employees will take a 50 per cent cut, while the class 4 employees will suffer a 10 per cent cut.

According to the order, the deferments will be applicable to pensions and honorariums as well. Apart from Class 4 employees, outsourced and contractual staff and the newly employed village and ward secretariat staff will be paid 90 per cent of their salaries, with only a 10 per cent deferment, the order said.

The salary deferments in Andhra Pradesh were announced hours after the Telangana government took a similar decision. The government had ordered deferment on payment of wages/salaries, including all allowances and perks/pensions had been contemplated. The deferment in gross salary in respect of the Chief Minister, Cabinet Ministers, MLAS, MLCS, chairpersons of corporations and elected representatives of local bodies would be 75 per cent while it would be 60 per cent of gross salary in respect of All India

Services officers, including IAS, IPS and IFS officers.

The deferment in respect of all other categories of the employees would be 50 per cent in gross salary, except for Classiv employees and in respect of Class-iv employees, outsourcing and contract staff, the deferment would be 10 per cent. Similar deferment would be effective for retired employees as per their category and deduction of salaries/pensions of employees of all Psus/government aided institutions/organisations would be on par with the government employees.

In a similar trend, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had also announced that he along with other MLAS will take 60 per cent pay cut. The Grade A and B officers will get a 50 per cent salary cut. However, there will be no salary deductions for Grade D employees.