The voluntary retirement scheme for central government employees will give an option of two ex gratia alternatives to employees to choose between to make it more attractive for them.
Employees can either opt for calculating their ex gratia payment on the basis of 45 days salary for every completed year of service or choose 35 days of salary for every completed years of service and 25 days of salary for the number of years that they still have in service.
Sources said that the second option has been framed to encourage younger employees to also choose VRS. The ex gratia will be in addition to the pension and gratuity benefits that central government employees are eligible for. Salary has been defined as consisting of basic pay and DA.
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The government has already prepared the cabinet note which will be implemented after the next cabinet meeting.
However there will be no change in the number of qualifying years for getting either pension or gratuity from the existing pattern. Employees are eliglible to get pensionary benefit after a minimum of 20 years of service while they get gratuity after ten years in service.
The scheme patterned on the second rung of PSU VRS is expected to kick start the much needed reduction from the ranks of the 3.4 million central government employees. It will however be the prerogative of the nodal ministries to identify staff and departments as surplus who will then become eligible to apply for VRS.
The employees will also be shifted to the surplus pool that will be run by the newly christened department for training and deployment under the department of personnel. Their salary will also be paid for by the new department for which necessary allocations will be made in the budget.
Those who do not opt for VRS but want to continue will be given the chance to be retrained. However there will be an upper limit of one year on the maximum time that they can continue in the pool.
According to sources the long pending rationalisation of the work force in the National Savings Organisation which was one of the budget promises of the finance minister this year can now be announced. They said without the VRS in place the surplus pool concept was simply not viable.
VRS scheme for PSUs modified
The voluntary retirement scheme for public sector enterprises was modified on Tuesday to enable the employees to get a 50-100 per cent increase in computation of ex-gratia payment.
The modifications in VRS guidelines cleared by the Cabinet effected 100 per cent rise for those employees for whom ex-gratia payment was calculated as per the 1987 payscale, an official spokesperson said in New Delhi.
Those whose ex-gratia payment is calculated as per the 1992 payscale would get a 50 per cent hike, the spokesperson said, adding that the increase had been effected as PSUs payscales had not been revised for a long time and hence were getting low VRS package.