LAHORE: As per notification issued by the Finance Department, Government of the Punjab on 1st June 2023, the Punjab Government employees who are set to retire are going to suffer heavy financial losses in the form of leave encashment/pension and the payments will be made as per the initial rather than the running basic pay of that scale.
In a statement Secretary Punjab University Academic Association Amjad Abbas Khan Magsi condemned that the Punjab University administration has instantly adopted the said notification without any deliberations and approval by the statutory bodies. The protest of the employees for securing their legitimate rights is fully supported.
It is quite unfortunate that the university administration creates unnecessary hurdles in providing financial benefits to its employees and exploits the situation under the guise of bureaucracy, and does not hesitate in adopting the notifications which are meant for financial losses e.g. the withdrawal of time scale promotions in the recent past.
The university teachers/ employees are still deprived of increase in house requisition amount which had to be implemented with effect from 2021. Despite having signed an agreement, the PU administration has not transferred such benefits to the teachers and staff.
A meeting of the University Senate held under the chairmanship of the Chancellor/Governor has approved Disparity Reduction Allowance of 15% (July 2022) for grades 1-19 and 25% (July 2021) for teachers and employees in grade 20-21. The University Syndicate has already approved it in December 2022, but the teachers and staff are still deprived from it.
On the other hand, huge amount allocated for teacher research in the current budget has been spent on university transport, while teachers have been deprived of performance evaluation awards for the past three years.
Strongly condemning the government and university administrations responsible for the cut in pension benefits, non-payment of disparity allowances support the employees’ protest against this move.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023