BHUBANESWAR: As a Utkal Divas gift for government employees, the State government has hiked the annual honorarium paid under Rule-120 of Odisha Service Code. A government servant is generally granted an honorarium for work performed which is occasional or intermittent in character and either laborious or of such special merit as to justify a special reward.
The upper ceiling of honorarium payable to government employees during a financial year has been revised from the current level of Rs 40,000 to Rs 50,000. As per an office memorandum issued by the Finance department, the amount will be fixed in a graded manner within the upper ceiling of Rs 50,000 for different ranks so as to rationalise honorarium payable to government servants.
The ceiling of honorarium of employees in the rank of Additional and Joint Secretary category has been revised to Rs 50,000 from Rs 40,000 and from Rs 35,000 to Rs 44,000 for the employees under the category of Deputy Secretary, Under Secretary, Principal PS and Senior PS.
The SO, DO, ASO, PS, PA, issue superintendent, diary superintendent, senior steno, senior DEO and equivalent will now get Rs 38,000 instead of Rs 30,000 and typist, junior steno, driver and equivalent will be paid Rs 31,000 in place of Rs 25,000 earlier.
Similarly, the ceiling of honorarium of diarist, daftari, peon and equivalent has been revised from Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000. Employees working on contractual basis or as OSD or consultant will be entitled to honorarium equivalent to the posts against which they have been engaged.
The upper ceiling of honorarium payable to different categories of employees has been decided taking into consideration the basic pay as per the Odisha Revised Scale of Pay (ORSP) Rules, 2017, without factoring in the Revised Assured Career Progression (RACP)/Modified Assured Career Progression (MACP) benefit accrued to the employees concerned.
“Demands were received from various quarters for revision of the ceiling following the rising price of commodities and fuel. Four years have passed since the honorarium was revised last,” said a Finance department official. The honorarium was last revised in February 2018 after the implementation of ORSP Rules, 2017. The upper ceiling of the amount was hiked to Rs 40,000 from Rs 20,000.