Strange and outdated allowances: 7th CPC gets them scraped
It is hard to believe that the government employees are given perks that are as meager in amounts as Rs 5 per month. there are almost 200 such allowances that the 7th Central Pay Commission finds not worthy of even calling allowances and have proposed to scrape them. CISF receive a hair cutting allowance of Rs 5 per month but this allowance has no relevance today. Hair cutting is already accommodated in the personal maintenance allowance of the cadre.
There have been 6 central pay commissions before this one and no one could ever notice these irrelevant allowances that prevail in various government agencies. Similar to the above example is that of the postal department. This department’s employees enjoy Rs 90/month as cycle allowance which is sanctioned only if the proof of use of cycle is provided to the department by the employee. In the same way the IFS officers are given Rs 100 for learning a foreign language; if they achieve levels above proficient the allowance increases to Rs 200. This amount is too low to learn a language. Basically these perks and the amount given have not been revised since many years and this has led either the perk or the granted amount to become outdated.
So Justice AK Mathur, Chairman of the 7th CPC has recommended abolition of 52 allowances in the report submitted to the ministry of finance 10 days ago. The reason stated is that the named allowances have no significance in the present time.
Apart from the above mentioned allowances there various others which deserve a mention in this article such as:
Soap toilet allowance: this allowance is given to the personnel of Assam rifles who are in combat. The amount that was allotted per month was Rs 90. The 7th CPC has recommended its abolition as this is covered in the composite personal maintenance allowance.
Diet allowance: this allowance is given to those on deputation to bureau of immigration as food compensation but the amount of Rs 200 is too meager and the justification is invalid for this allowance to continue
Funeral allowance: this is also being scraped due to invalid justification
But there are a few allowances that are to be continued such as:
The briefcase allowance is for the secretary level employees of the government and the amount will be further increased with every DA.
Book allowance: for the trainees of IFS this book allowance will continue but only for learning foreign languages.