Share photos, details of LTC: Centre to staff

Aiming to put a check on abuse of Leave Travel Concession (LTC) scheme, the Centre has decided to make it mandatory for all central government employees to share their photos and details of holidays. 

Learning from the LTC scam that had hit the headlines in 2013, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), which has come up with fresh guidelines, has decided to make stringent changes in the rules of LTC scheme.

According to the new guidelines, all central government employees will now be sharing their photos and interesting details of holidays to authenticate the place for which they have availed the LTC package.

Besides, bureaucrats have been exempted from informing their controlling officers before going on a holiday and a self-certification from them would suffice. The DoPT has sought the comments from all stakeholders on the new guidelines within 15 days.

There are about 50 lakh central government employees.

According to the new rules, all LTC claims will now be settled in a maximum of one month’s time and an additional 10 days will be given to settle dues related to LTC travels by an employee in case s/he is posted away from the headquarters.

“Employees may be encouraged to share interesting insights and pictures, if any, of the destination he or she visited while availing LTC on an appropriate forum,” the rules finalised by DoPT said.

“Sometimes, government servants claim that failure to follow the correct procedure was on account of lack of knowledge of the rules or instructions, while in the other cases, the delay is caused in the late processing of LTC claims.  To remove these bottlenecks, the department has decided to simplify the application process and make the procedure of processing of LTC claims time bound,” the DoPT said.

It has been decided that whenever a government servant applies for an LTC, s/he may be provided with a copy of the 17-point guidelines, which need to be followed while availing the leave.

As per the new guidelines, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) will be reminding government officials entitled to travel by air that they “are required to travel by Air India only in economy class” unless permitted to do so by any general or specific provision.