CHENNAI: Employees of the Aavin association have appealed to Chief Minister MK Stalin for financial assistance to enable the implementation of 4% dearness allowance hike which has been delayed for over eight months. The combined workforce of Aavin staff across the federation and district unions is 5,000.
In its representation submitted to Stalin, the association highlighted that Aavin is incurring daily losses of nearly Rs 75 lakh due to a reduction in the selling price of milk by Rs 3 per litre since May 2021. Despite this, the government has not provided any subsidy to offset these losses.
An employee said, “While state government employees have been drawing a DA of 46 % for the past eight months, Aavin staff DA remains at 38%.” The Aavin administration has agreed to enhance the DA from 38% to 42% from January 1 after the employees held a demonstration recently.
“Due to the severe financial constraints, we have not been provided with the arrears for the 4% increase in DA from 38% to 42%. Additionally, our request for a further increase in DA from 42% to 46% remains unfulfilled. We urge the CM to provide compensation to Aavin to ensure the release of rightful salary benefits to employees,” added a worker.
The CM recently announced an increase in DA by 4 % for the government staff from 46 to 50 % effective from January 1. “When the DA hike from 42% to 46 % was yet to be implemented, we were worried how many months it would take to enforce the latest revision. Without government support, it would take years for Aavin to implement an 8 % DA hike for employees,” rued an office-bearer.