Jaitley: Recheck pay of government staff - Fusion - WeRIndia

The controller general of accounts (CGA) told the officials to vet the revised salaries of government employees and make sure they are following the recommendations of the Pay Commission. He asked them to recover any excess amount paid.

As many people might know, the 7th Pay Panel gave a recommendation of giving a hike of 2.57 times in basic salary of employees with effect from January 1. The panel paid about Rs.56,000 crore as wage arrears in August salary of employees.

The finance ministry told the controller general of accounts (CGA) that arrear claims may be paid with an improper pre-check of the pay fixation statement in revised scales to expedite the disbursement. The CGA said that it is important to make sure that the pay fixation be consequent after the revision of pay structure has been done without having any mistakes from the orders of government.

The ministry gave a new memorandum which asked the Controller of Accounts in various ministries and departments to start ensuring that the pay fixation statements are all fine and flag any mistakes.

That is not all, the memorandum from finance ministry further ordered to take necessary steps so that any excess amount paid to any individuals will be recovered without any errors.

The CGA is the principal accounts advisor to the government. The duty of the CGA is to maintain a proper management of the accounting system. CGA is the one who gives out analysis on government’s expenditure, revenues and fiscal deficit figure at the end of every month.

Looking at the fiscal deficit, it is found that the gap between expenditure and revenue for the entire fiscal reached 76.4 per cent of Budget estimates at the end of August. For full 2016-17, fiscal deficit is targeted at Rs 5.33 lakh crore or 3.5 per cent of GDP.

Image credit: Arun Jaitley image by Deccan Herald is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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