CM YS Jagan promises best fitment

Vijayawada: The long-pending issue of fitment of new wages as per the Pay Revision Committee recommendations is likely to be resolved in the next three days. Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, who held a meeting with all employee unions, assured them that he would work out a formula so as to ensure that the employees get maximum benefit taking into account the State's financial position.

He told them that he was holding back the likely percentage of fitment because he would like to incorporate the issues raised by the unions, discuss with the officials on the financial conditions and then take a decision on how best to help the employees.

He said as a family member, today he can only assure that he will try to see that they get maximum benefit. "I will do what I can to the best of my abilities," he said. The Chief Minister explained the financial situation in the State and said because of Covid-19 and other problems, the growth in State revenues has seen a fall. Normally, the revenue for any State should increase up to 15 per cent or so over the previous year but that did not happen. Now the threat of third wave is there and in many States restrictions like night curfew have been imposed and we do not know what kind of impact it would again have on the economy.

The CM said people say that he is known to be a person who is very liberal in announcing benefits but at the same time he needs to take decisions based on the existing financial condition and whatever decision was taken should be practical and easily implementable.

He said the present salary and pensions burden on the exchequer was Rs 67,342 crore as against Rs 52,513 crore in 2018-19. This was because the government was employee friendly.

The Chief Minister said in view of this situation, the employees should scale down their demand on fitment while the finance department should think of giving the maximum possible percentage. It is learnt that different unions had demanded different percentages as fitment. The least was 25 per cent. However, the government would be making an announcement most probably by Monday.