N.K. Premachandran, MP and president of the Kerala chapter of National Confederation of Officers’ Associations, slammed the Union government’s decision to freeze the dearness allowance (DA) of employees of public sector undertakings (PSUs) for the period between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021.
The decision was highly objectionable and unfair, he said in a statement issued in Kochi on Monday. The decision was taken without discussion with the national-level trade union or at the factory-level organisations, he added. The decision had established that the government had scant regard for the lawful, prevalent procedures and that it would go to any extent to take unilateral actions, said the MP.
The freezing of DA had “caused irreparable loss to the PSU employees, who are due to retire during this period”, he added.
He pointed out that service conditions and periodic wage revisions were not similar for the Central government employees and PSU employees. While wages of the Central government employees are met out of the national exchequer, PSU employees are paid out of the internal resources of the PSUs and is based on its paying capacity. So was the case with pension payments, he said. The pension liability for Central government employees was on the exchequer but there was no budgetary allocation or burden on the exchequer for the PSU employees, he added.
