THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It seems enterprising politicians do not want to miss any opportunity to squeeze party workers and well-wishers into government service.
Besides the speaker and the deputy speaker, chairpersons of five assembly committees have also been empowered to appoint personal staffers. And not surprisingly, most of them are appointed based on their political inclination.
While the speaker and deputy speaker are entitled to 25 appointments each, committee chairpersons can appoint two personal staff each — an assistant and office attendant. The committees are public accounts, estimates, public undertakings, local fund accounts, and petitions. This is apart from the staff of the legislature secretariat who are assigned to work with these committees.
As a convention, personal staffers were allotted to chairpersons of committees dealing with financial matters for several years. An exception is the petitions committee. Its chairman was allotted the privilege of appointing two personal staffers when K B Ganesh Kumar was named its chairman in the previous assembly.
It seemed to be a ‘compensation’ for the MLA who could not be made a minister in the first Pinarayi Vijayan government. The convention continued this time too.
Pension for personal staffers was instituted by the K Karunakaran-led UDF government in 1994. The order was issued with retrospective effect from 1982. LDF, which was in the opposition then, also supported the move. Since then several benefits were offered to personal staffers including allowances, commutation, gratuity and family pension.
Govts take extra care to help PAs get max money
According to the 11th Pay Revision Commission, the state had 1,223 personal staff pensioners as of July 2019. Just like regular government employees, pay and perks of personal staffers and pensioners are revised as per the commission’s recommendations. Successive governments have taken extra care to help personal staffers get maximum money from the exchequer.
Take for instance pension calculation. It is calculated using the formula: Half of the Last Drawn Salary divided by 30 and then multiplied by number of years of service. There are hardcore party workers who began personal staff stints as office attendant and got promoted to the post of additional private secretary. The present salary scale of an office attendant and additional PS are Rs 23,000-Rs 50,200 and Rs 1,07,800-Rs 1,60,000, respectively.
While the government is quick to implement pay revision for personal staff every five years, other recommendations that cause inconvenience to staffers and former staffers are ignored. For example, it is yet to act on the commission’s report to prevent the malpractice in which administrators appoint double the number of persons that they are entitled to.
The rule says a person having minimum of three years of service is eligible for pension. Qualifying service for maximum pension is 30 years. For reckoning, the minimum service, any tenure above 2 years will be rounded to three. Under the existing scheme, a person with two years and one day of qualifying service will attain eligibility for a minimum pension of Rs 3,550 plus seven per cent dearness allowance.
Min monthly pension for 5-year service
Office attendant: Rs 3,550+ DA Rs 248.50
Addl pvt secy: Rs 8,983+ DA Rs 629