Causal workers of the DGHC will get an enhanced salary equal to the pay scale of government employees from November

Darjeeling, Oct. 16: Nearly 6,000 causal workers of the DGHC will get an enhanced salary from November, equal to the pay scale of government employees of the same rank, under an agreement reached between the state and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha early this year.

The hike will be with retrospective effect from August. The casual workers will also have a job security till the age of 60 but will not be entitled to any dearness allowance or retirement benefits like pension.

The administrator of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council or the DGHC, Anil Verma, said: “We have received the order from the state finance department recently and the salaries will be enhanced with retrospective effect from August 1, 2011. We are working out the modalities and the arrears of the workers should be cleared from November onwards.”

The DGHC will cease to exist when the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration or the new authority for the hills is set up — the bill for which has been passed. But it is not clear what will happen to the staff. The GTA, however, has the authority to create jobs and recruit employees in the Group B, C and D categories.

Now, the monthly salaries of the casual staff in the Groups B, C and D categories of the DGHC range from Rs 2,000 to Rs 6,000. There has been no increment in the past 20 years. Not only that at one point of time, the salaries had been reduced too.

According to the order, DGHC casual workers who have completed 10 years of regular service with a minimum of 240 days a year will be included in a pay band or PB.

The order sent to the DGHC is in line with a finance department instruction issued on April 23, 2010, for casual workers employed by the government across Bengal.

“An employee will get a certain amount depending on his ‘grade pay’ and the basic salary. Together, they will be known as the pay band,” said a government official.

He said the “grade pay” would be calculated on the basis of the basic salary.

The pay band of a Group D DGHC employee, for example, is known as PB I.

This means that a Group D worker, who has completed 10 years of service at the DGHC and draws Rs 3,500 a month, will now get a minimum salary of not less than Rs 6,600.

Similarly, a rough estimate shows that Group C and B casual workers are expected to receive something between Rs 8,000 and Rs 12, 000 a month.

Those working in Group A category will get anything around Rs 21,000 from the present salary of Rs 9,500.

At the moment, Group C and B employees of the DGHC receive Rs 4,000 and 6,000 respectively.

The order also has a provision for providing an increment of 5 per cent in the PB every three years and on retirement at the age of 60, all employees will get a consolidated amount of Rs 1 lakh each.

The pay band for casual workers across the state has been in force since June 1, 2010. The same had, however, not been applied to the DGHC workers till now.

The state government has however made certain concession for DGHC causal workers, compared to other government temporary staff who are part of the payband.

The April 2010 order had stated that only those who had completed 10 years of service as on April 1, 2010, would be brought under the purview of the new arrangement. For the DGHC workers, no such deadline has been fixed and all casual employees will be automatically brought under the PB system as and when they complete 10 years of service.

But DGHC employees who have not completed 10 years of service will get an hike in salary. For such workers there will be a 75 per cent hike in the salary and the lowest amount fixed will not be less than Rs 5,000 per month.

Machendra Subba, the president of the Janmukti Asthai Karmachari Sangatan, said he was happy with the development. “There is job security for all the DGHC workers and this is good news for us.”

It is being estimated that of the 6,000-odd employees of the DGHC, around 3000 are likely to be included in the PB.

-TT