Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday announced an additional 18 percent Dearness Allowance (DA) to the state government employees from January 2019.
The Chief Minister further said that the state government has also decided to merge the 10 percent interim relief into the DA and the total DA of the state government employees will be 125 percent.
"Because I had made a commitment towards the state government employees, we are announcing it a bit early because we have to follow some planning.
"We have decided to release additional 18 percent DA to the state government employees including teachers and non-teaching staff of educational institutions and employees of rural and urban local bodies. This will be effective from next January," Banerjee told reporters at the state Secretariat.
The state government will have to bear an annual additional expenditure of Rs 5,000 crore, she said.
It is 90 percent more than what it was till the end of the Left Front regime.
This comes when the state government is passing through "financial constraints" and needs to clear a huge debt that it inherited from the erstwhile Left Front government.
After the announcement, Banerjee said in the same breath: "There are financial constraints. But the decision to release the DA has been taken as I had given my word to the employees and with it, we are clearing whatever would be left till January 2019."
Stating that the release of the DA will cost Rs 5,000 crore more to the state's exchequer every year, she added: "It has been done even after clearing a loan of Rs 2.30 lakh crore and this year we have to clear Rs 46,000 crore. At the same time, we also need to run several social security schemes including Khadya Sathi and Kanyashree."
Banerjee further added that state Parliamentary Affairs minister Partha Chatterjee also played a crucial role in ensuring the release of the DA.
It may be mentioned that the Chief Minister had addressed a programme of the Paschim Banga Rajya Sarkar Karmachari Federation in September 2017 at Nazrul Manch where she had assured that the demand of the state government employees will be looked into before 2019.