Ordinance to allow Telangana defer govt salaries & pensions

Koride.Mahesh@timesgroup.com

Hyderabad  18.06.2020

: The Telangana government on Tuesday night hurriedly promulgated an ordinance which allowed it to defer salaries and pensions of its employees without getting into legal tangles.

The Telangana disaster and public health emergency (special provisions) ordinance, 2020, allowed the K Chandrasekhar Rao government to even defer payments to institutions in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the state’s reduced revenues.

Telangana high court had on Monday pulled up the state for deferring pensions after a number of employees challenged the decision to impose salary and pension cuts for the past three months. The judges said that even the Disaster Management Act did not give the government such powers.

Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan issued the ordinance through a gazette notification that came into effect from March 24, the day the national Covid-19 lockdown was imposed.

The ordinance reads “to make special provision for the deferment of any payment in party, due and payable to any person, institution and any pay, pension and remuneration in part, to any employees, any pensioner and any other person, in the event of disaster and public health emergency in the state and for the matters connected therewith of incidental thereto.”

In the ordinance, the government has even defined disaster, employee, pay, pension and public health emergency empowering the state government to defer payment in the event of any outbreak of any contagious disease. The gazette notification gives immunity from legal scrutiny.

The government has been imposing a cut in the salaries of all employees except some departments such as police, doctors and sanitation workers, public representatives and pensioners.

Full report on www.toi.in