s many as 60,000 gazetted officers, including doctors, college lecturers and judicial officers are yet to draw the revised salary and perks recommended by the Tenth Pay Commission, owing to the delay in updating their service details in the Service and Payroll Administrative Repository for Kerala (SPARK).
Despite the government assurance to effect the pay hike from February, the gazetted officers continue to draw the salary and other benefits which they had been availing of before the submission of the pay panel report. The alleged haste shown by the government in pushing through a series of reforms without adequate preparations and training is being blamed for the delay in disbursal.
Earlier every gazetted officer was a self-drawing officer and the salary bills were prepared and submitted by them individually. The government, on the premise of easing the procedural wrangles in the treasuries, decided to have one drawing and disbursal officer (DDO) for every office and salary bills are now being forwarded online to the treasury by the designated officer.
Till March 15, each DDO was given the authority to make manual entries in SPARK, but since then, the entire system was automated and a SPARK cell was constituted for the purpose.
The Information Technology wing of the Finance Department has taken over control of the payroll administration from the Kerala State Information Technology Mission (KSITM) which was earlier entrusted with its management.
Unless an officer avails himself of leave or gets promoted, the payroll system will generate his salary slip on the basis of the details issued by the Accountant General without any hitch.
In the event of a change, if the new salary, benefits and change in designation issued by the AG are not updated in the officer’s account by the SPARK cell in time, it would go awry.
Implementation of the pay commission report warranted a thorough updation of the salary and benefits of a large number of officers.
Lack of training
Since the personnel manning SPARK cell were not duly trained, they were unable to incorporate the revised salary and benefits into the payroll system. Too many errors and anomalies have been spotted in the entries too.
Thus the disbursal system went awry and the officers are being forced to be content with their old pay scales, sources said.
Though the government has set up a State-level SPARK help desk here, they are finding it difficult to manage the flood of complaints regarding the entries.
No decision has so far been made to set up SPARK help desks in every district for weeding out the errors in entries, sources said.
The IT wing of the Finance Department has taken over control of the payroll administration
