7 CPC Annual increments should be denied to non performing Employees
According to the recommendations of the Seventh Central Pay Commission, annual increments should be denied to those employees of Central Government who do no meet performance criterion. It also seeks to raise the performance benchmark from ‘good’ to ‘very good’.
Seventh Pay Commission:
The Seventh Pay Commission, formed in February 2014 by previous UPA Government, presided by Justice A K Mathur, consisted of members namely Vikas Rae, retired IAS officer, Batch 1978, Rathin Roy, a profound economist and Meena Agarwal being the Secretary of the Commission.
The recommendations put forth by the Commission will come in to effect from January 1, 2016. Almost every ten years, the Pay Commission is reconstituted in order to look into the Pay scale of the employees. These revised pay scales are then adopted by the states in modified forms. About forty eight lakhs of Central Government employees and fifty five lakhs of pensioners are seen to gain from the Pay Commission.
One of the recommendations of the Pay Commission hints at introducing the Performance Related Pay (PRP) for Central Government employees of all categories.
Widespread perception exists, of increments and promotions taking place as a matter of course. In spite of the fact that Modified Assured Career Progression (MACP) is subject to employee’s performance criteria, not much value is attached to it, according to the panel.
An opinion is formed by the Commission that no future annual increments should be granted to the employees who do not reach the threshold set for performance. This will prevent the employees from remaining unproductive for their respective jobs. Therefore the Commission wishes to refuse increments to those employees who within the first twenty years of their employment fail to meet performance criteria for MACP or regular promotion.
In order to take care of expenditures of One Rank One Pension (OROPs), toll on the exchequer will be enforced by the Seventh Pay Commission. Salary expenditure budget of central Government, after Seventh Pay Commission is put to force, will shoot up by 9.56% amounting to Rs. 1, 00,619 crores.
The report submitted to the government says that this is nothing but an efficiency bar and not a penalty, which is why penal laws for withholding increments will not apply to such cases. The panel further clarified that as an alternative, such employees can abandon their jobs on the terms similar as those for voluntary retirement.
The frequency at which employees receive MACP i.e. ten, twenty and thirty years will not be raised.
In addition to the requirement of upgradation of performance appraisal standard from ‘good’ to ‘very good’ both for Modified Assured Career Progression and regular promotion in order to enhance the performance level, the Commission also recommends bringing into practice certain other stricter criteria. These include clearance of departmental examinations, mandatory training before grant of MACP and their likes.
According to a recent report the count of Central Government employees has gone up to forty seven lakhs. It is the Commission’s view that Performance Related Pay will prove to a reasonable supporting structure to accentuate performances throughout ministries and departments. It is suggested that for the smooth implementation of PRP, layered approach should be adopted instead of bringing in an entire new system. The layered or incremental approach is the one which can operate within the existing system.
On the basis of quality Result Framework Documents, reformed Annual Performance Appraisal Reports and broad guidelines, all the central government employees are covered by the PRP. The Commission opines that PRP will encompass all the existing bonus schemes. It also adds that until all the departments successfully implement and execute PRP, the current bonus schemes should be revised and linked with increased productivity or profitability.