IR, PRC come in the way of hiking retirement age

​Hyderabad: Telangana state government is in a fix on increasing the retirement age of the government employees as promised by the TRS in the just-concluded assembly elections. The ruling party assured the employees of increasing the retirement age to 61 from the present 58 years.

Top officials said that the government seems not ready to take up the issue of extension of retirement age of the employees until it finalises the disbursement of Interim Relief (IR) and finalisation of the first PRC (Pay Revision Commission) for all government employees.

The state government has constituted a three-member PRC headed by retired IAS official CR Biswal in June this year. After receiving suggestions from all employees and unions, the commission is busy finalising the pay structure for employees from Grave V to Group I officers.

According to the official procedure, the government will offer IR before implementing the PRC. The state government has planned to disburse IR from August this year. The dissolution of the state assembly in September and the early elections held in December first week had forced the TRS government to defer its proposal to the release of IR amount indefinitely. The government has already analysed the financial implications if the IR and PRC are implemented. The rough estimates point out there would be an outgo of Rs 300 crore per annum even if 1 per cent of IR is given. A relief of 10 per cent means a burden of Rs 3,000 crore and 20 per cent means, double the amount.

At least 500 employees are being retired from the services after attaining 58 years every two months in the Telangana state, officials said, pointing out that if the retirement age is increased, the government would have to bear the additional financial burden by disbursing the salaries. Apart from this, the government is planning to take up mass recruitment and fill the vacancies identified in all departments from 2019 onwards.  Officials said that the government will have to take into consideration the financial implications once the PRC, increase in the retirement age and recruitment that is being taken up simultaneously.

Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has already announced that he would go ahead with the implementation of the promise of reducing the age from 65 to 57 to avail old-age pension and hiking the benefit to Rs 2,016 from Rs 1,000 from next financial year. An official source said that the government is keen to implement PRC and disburse IR on a priority basis before taking a decision on the increase in retirement age.