Employees of state govt allowed advance salaries

The state government on Monday decided to allow its employees to draw a part of their salary in advance in cash.

The decision has been taken to give them respite from the trouble they are facing due to the ongoing 

cash crunch, after the Centre hastily decided to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.

Teaching and non-teaching staff in educational institutions, employees in gram panchayat, municipalities, municipal corporations, PSUs and boards in the posts equivalent to group-C and group-D would be getting Rs 5,000 from their salary for the month of December. Meanwhile, contractual employees in the same ranks will be getting Rs 2,000 as advance against their remuneration, provided their average monthly payment is more than Rs 2000.

The employees will need to apply to the concerned officials of their respective departments before November 25, or else they would be considered not interested in taking the cash advance. They would be getting the money before November 30.

It may be mentioned that on November 17, the West Bengal Government Employees Union (Nabaparjay) had submitted a memorandum to the Chief Secretary Basudeb Banerjee with a request for payment of salaries of state government employees in cash for the month of November.

Members of the association had placed the demand after assessing that withdrawing money from banks to run their families has become an impossible task due to the “demonetisation drive of the Central government”.

The step taken by the Bengal government has been appreciated by many of its employees. They mentioned that it would help them a lot as they can use the money to buy essential commodities at the beginning of a month and will not need to stand in queues outside banks or ATMs to get money.

In a bid to give relief to its employees, the state Finance department set up a help-desk in Nabanna from where the employees were allowed to exchange demonetised notes with that of lower denomination. Each employee was allowed to exchange Rs 1,500.