New Delhi The Andhra Pradesh cabinet presided over by chief minister, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, on Wednesday decided to provide the government employees an assured pension of 50% of their last drawn salary under the Guaranteed Pension Scheme (GPS), a government statement said. The Guaranteed Pension Scheme is similar to the restoration of Old Pension Scheme, announced by several Congress ruled states such as Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh.
The new GPS will replace the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS), against which, the state government employees were protesting for a long time. The employees were demanding GPS over CPS as the latter doesn’t assure a minimum pension. Jagan Mohan Reddy had promised to replace CPS with GPS before the 2019 state assembly elections.
The new pension scheme would ensure gradual growth of the dearness allowance (DA) for the government employees, that would ensure payment of 50% pension after retirement, said a government statement. A bill in this regard was approved by the cabinet.
In another decision to woo government employees before the state assembly elections in 2024 with national polls, the cabinet has also decided to regularise all 10,000 contractual employees, who have completed five years of service before June 2, 2014, the date of bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into two states — Andhra and Telangana.
The statement said that the cabinet has sanctioned 6,840 new posts in various departments. It has also approved the government’s decision to abolish Vidya Vidhan Parishath and treat its 14,653 employees as government employees who would be shifted to Directorate of Secondary Health. The cabinet also sanctioned 2,118 posts for the new medical colleges, the statement said.
“It has been decided to enhance house rent allowance (HRA) from 12 to 16 per cent for government employees working in district head quarters and increase the DA by 2.73%. Arrears would be paid from Jan 1, 2022. This would impose an additional financial burden of ₹200 crore every month on the state finances,” the statement said.
The other cabinet decisions taken were regarding new posts in several other departments and to set up junior colleges in every block of the state.
“With the aim of improving English communication skills of the students, the cabinet has decided to impart training to students of classes from 3 to 9 and hold 3 preparatory examinations to help them face TOEFL. If necessary, teachers would be sent to the USA for special training,” the government statement said.
The cabinet also approved a proposal to allot 28.35 acres of land on lease for 99 years to the Chittoor Dairy to benefit dairy farmers in the cooperative sector. The Cabinet approved the green hydrogen, ammonia policy and also gave its nod for the establishment of 300 MW green energy plant in the private sector with an investment of ₹300 crore in Satya Sai District, the statement said.
The cabinet has also decided to hand over the management of temples, which are getting an annual income of less than ₹5 lakh, to the respective committees. This would be in force for five years and the temple Archakas or local committees would be allowed to run them, the statement said.
