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In the wake of the coronavirus-induced economic crisis, Haryana government decided to freeze dearness allowance (DA) of its employees and dearness relief (DR) of all pensioners. an official statement by the Haryana Finance Department said. ‘In view of the crisis arising out of COVID-19, it has been decided that additional installment of Dearness Allowance payable to Haryana Government employees and Dearness Relief to Haryana government pensioners, due from January 1, 2020 shall not be paid,’ the statement by the ministry said.
Although the state government will continue to pay both DA and DR at a rate of 17 per cent, employees and pensioners will not receive the arrears of these allowances which were due from 1 July 2020, and 1 January 2021.
‘As and when the decision to release the future installment of Dearness Allowance and Dearness Relief due from July 1, 2021 is taken by the government, the rates of Dearness Allowance and Dearness Relief as effective from January 1, 2020, July 1, 2020, and January 1, 2021 will be restored prospectively and will be subsumed in the cumulative revised rate effective from July 1, 2021. No arrears for the period from January 1, 2020 till June 30, 2021, shall be paid,’ it further said.According to a report in Hindustan Times, there are about 3.5 lakh employees across 38 departments, boards and corporations of the state. The salary bill of the employees is about Rs 1,870 crore per month, while the pension bill comes to around Rs 770 crore per month.
The Centre had put on hold hike in inflation-linked allowance. The freezing of DA/DR till July 2021 will help the Centre save Rs 37,500 crore and the states Rs 82,500 crore. The corpus will help the government fight the covid-19 pandemic and may offer it some room to announce a stimulus package.
