Woes of a Public Sector Employee

In the morning with the ritual cup of morning tea, I was just glancing thru the main page of Times of India (3^rd April’12) when my heart lost a beat! No, no, no. I am not a heart patient. But the news item – Salary hikes pegged at 12% in India – is sure to make your heart race or falter! And surely heart would falter when you know, you are not among the ones who would get the pay hike.

The salary hike projection for the current year is at 12% overall with auto-sector employees expected to net about 14.38% followed by pharma sector at 12.8%! These figures are from M/s Mercer – a global consulting firm. It is learnt that signs of economic recovery are stronger, hence 75% of the companies are increasing their budget allocation for pay hikes. Also, 54% of the employees are planning to leave their organisation!

We, in public sector, are a different tribe. Economic Recovery or Recession, hardly it matters – to us in terms of pay. Yes, of late some facilities get withdrawn Most of the public sector companies had pay revision in 2007 – with periodicity for pay revision stated as ‘within ten years’! Going by the inflation rate since 2007 considering at an average rate of 6%, our pay rate has already devalued by about 35%, whereas, with conservative pay rate hike @ 11% in private sector during the same period – employees in the private sector have been better compensated with aggregate hike of about 68%! What compensation we get on annual basis? Increment of mere 3%!! The minimum wages for labour are revised every six months

Pay revision in public sector is not expected soon. We will have to fight tooth and nail for it. And by the time we get it- in another five years, our pay would get devalued to about 80%! We need lot of planning to do – to make the ends meet.

madhukarmohan@gmail.com