COVID-19: UP scraps allowances of employees to cope with financial crisis

In view of the additional financial burden following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Uttar Pradesh government has decided to scrap multiple allowances given to its employees.

Last month, the government had decided to stop these allowances for the employees of different departments for a year.

A notification issued by Finance Secretary Sanjeev Mittal on Tuesday said, “A review of the allowances stopped or not existing at the Centre and permissible in state was carried out, following decline in state governments revenues in view of the corona pandemic.”

The department, through separate orders, scrapped the city compensatory allowance (CCA), secretariat allowance, special allowance given to different wings of the police, the special allowance paid to junior engineers in all the departments, the research, orderly and design allowance paid in the Public Works Department (PWD), along with the investigation and planning and orderly allowance paid to the officers and employees of the irrigation department and the encouragement allowance to employees for keeping Provident Fund records.

The government aims to save at least ₹1,500 crore a year through this move.

The Uttar Pradesh government had last month decided to put on hold the dearness allowance (DA) increase for its 16 lakh employees.