Central government changes LTC rules

June 20, 2022 Hot from the Oven Valli Sarvani No comments

The central government changed leave travel concession (LTC) rules under the 7th pay commission for employees. LTC is one of the most vital components of the salary of the employees, which facilitates them to reimburse their travel expenses. Their travel expenses are reimbursed by the government.

As per the new LTC rules notified by the Ministry of Finance, employees should opt for the cheapest fare available in the travel class.

Besides, they should buy tickets three weeks before the schedule of their journey. They should book tickets only through authorised travel agents like IRCTC, Ashok Travels etc. There is no need to pay fees to the agents to book their tickets for the journey.

They should book only one ticket for each leg of the journey. To control expenditure, they should avoid the cancellation of tickets. In the event of the cancellation of a ticket, employees should submit an explanation within 72 hours.

Meanwhile, the government of India directed central government employees not to use virtual private networks (VPN) and cloud services to store confidential data. Google Drive and Dropbox are widely used cloud services by employees.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) and National Informatics Centre (NIC) jointly issued this directive.

As per this directive, the employees should not save any confidential government files on cloud services. This is because cloud services store the data on the internet rather than on the internal memory of the devices.

As part of improving security measures, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) set these rules. Usage of VPN services is a big threat to the security of the country as per the ministry. Many terrorist organizations use these networks. It is not possible even to track them.

That’s why the central government directed its employees not to use cloud services to store data and files, especially confidential data. Also, they should not use VPN services.

Besides, employees should not use third-party applications like Camscanner to scan government documents. All government offices should follow cyber security guidelines prescribed by the government.

All VPN companies should maintain a record of their customers who use their services and abide by the prescribed guidelines. If they do not follow these guidelines, they should move away from the country.

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