CHENNAI: Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman struck a chord with Gramin Dak Sevaks (GDS) of Tamil Nadu by empathising with them for being lowly paid and said the revision of their wages by the Union government was not a favour, but their right.
Sitharaman, who was sent at the behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, told more than 1,000 GDS that the wage revision for them was being done at the behest of Prime Minister. Interestingly, the revision in the wage structure would cost the exchequer `1,257.75 crore during 2018-19 and 3.07 lakh GDS will benefit from it.
Till now, six committees were set up by the government and their recommendation to revise the allowance structure and service condition of GDS have been brought into effect. The previous committee was set up in 2007 under the chairmanship of R S Natraja Murthy and the sixth committee was set up in 2015 under the chairmanship of Kamlesh Chandra (retired member, postal service board) which enquired the various aspects and gave the recommendations.
During an interactive session with GDS, the minister was besieged by requests of pension for GDS, gratuity and medical aid for employees.
Tamil Nadu postal circle has 12,138 post offices of which 9,304 are branch post offices which are manned by 21,025 GDS officials. The allowances are fixed on the basis of Time Related Continuity Allowance (TRCA) and the existing 11 TRCA has been divided into three TRCA categorieswith two levels.
R Anand, Postmaster- general was among those present on the occasion.
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