Lucknow: Toeing the Centre's line, the Uttar Pradesh government on Saturday decided to put on hold dearness allowance (DA) increase for its 16 lakh employees. The DA increase was due from January 1, 2020.
The state government also decided not to pay the DA instalments which will be due from July 1, 2020, and January 1, 2021, a government order issued here said.
The employees and pensioners will, however, continue to get the DA and dearness relief (DR) as per the rates of July 1, 2019, it said, adding it would be revived on July 1, 2021, at the prevailing rates at that time.
Besides freezing the DA, the government has also stopped six types of allowances given to the employees of different departments. These are city compensatory allowance, secretariat allowance and special allowance to police, PWD and irrigation department employees.
The order said the allowances have been stopped in view of the fall in state's revenue due to continued lockdown following coronavirus outbreak and for making resources available to deal with the pandemic.
The central government had on Thursday frozen inflation-linked allowance for its 1.1 crore employee and pensioners, helping save a combined Rs 1.2 lakh crores that could be used to combat the corornavirus-crisis.
Samajwadi Party President and former state Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav slammed the government and appealed to roll back the decision with immediate effect.
“The government should immediately take back the decision to suspend the DA of government employees. At one hand the employees are working day and night without any leave, on the other hand the government is demoralizing them. Elderly who are dependent on their pension will suffer the most from this decision,” he tweeted on Saturday.
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