The Seventh Pay Commission recommendations will be implemented by the government of Goa. This makes Goa the first state to implement this, after the Centre and Puducherry. The basic pay of government employees will be hiked by 2.57 times. An entry employee
who was getting Rs 7,000 basic pay as of December 31, 2015, will now get a basic pay of Rs 18,000. The upper limit has been fixed at Rs 2.5 lakhs. Of course, the onus is on the government of Goa whether to implement the pay hike effective January 1, 2016 as per the recommendations of the Ministry of Finance, or start it from next month. Either way, the monthly expenditure on salaries and pensions per month, will go up by Rs 72 crore in Goa. This amounts to
over Rs 800 crores extra over 12 months. The salary expenditure
for the year 2015-16 was Rs 1946 crore. The government
has now made a provision of Rs 2553 crore for this fiscal year,
according to the chief minister.
Salary hikes are standard practice
in all industries. Of course, in the
private sector, hikes are based on
performance appraisals according
to key responsibility areas that are
given to employees. For government
employees however, this does
not exist. Herein lies the question,
why can’t processes and systems that are standard in the private
sector be implemented in the public sector? The central
government has already stated that non-performing central
government employees will not be given an increment. State
governments can surely replicate that at the local level.
The reason is this. When government employees get salary
hikes without any performance appraisals, there is no incentive
to provide better service. The service provided to citizens
is often laggard and haphazard, with many having to return
time and again to get a simple document signed or seek redressal
to their woes, especially with electricity and other services
that are paid for.
If citizens are the ones paying government employees, then
surely they deserve to see some sort of systems in place to
pull up erring government servants and stop increments to
those who have been found guilty of lax service. Then there
is the matter of recruitment. Most government servants get
jobs through their local MLAs or by paying bribes. This results
in poorly qualified men and women who then provide poor
service, as is their wont. Recruitment systems need to be revamped
as well.
The idea that getting a government job means that you have
one for life, irrespective of how well you actually work, needs
to change. If all that happens, then a Rs 72 crore hike in monthly
salary budgets will not be a major concern.
