Retirement of officers and employees at government offices on the last day of a month became a thing of the past with the State government giving them a three-year extension of service.
As a result, the festive atmosphere associated with farewell functions at the offices was missing on Wednesday.
With no more retirements for the next three years, the government has inherited a saving of ₹7,265 crore on account of pay out of terminal service benefits like pension, gratuity, general provident fund contributions, group life insurance, 40% pension surrender and arrears of salary due to implementation of Pay Revision Commission report.
As many as 787 employees were supposed to retire on Wednesday on attaining the age of 58 years but the government had recently raised the age to 61 years and appointed March 30 as the effective date. They were supposed to get annual pensionary benefit of ₹268.76 crore, which has been deferred till March 2024.
The net deferment was ₹84.7 crore (₹268.76 crore mentioned in column 9 of the table given below minus ₹184.06 crore towards payment of salary in column 8).
A total of 29,669 employees have benefited by the extension of service with a liability on the government to pay them a total salary of ₹2,414 crore (column 3) for the next three years. But, the pensionary benefits that would have accrued to them if they had retired was ₹11,364 crore (column 9).
The year wise break-up of number of employees, who would have retired, salary payable to them per annum and adjusted against their notional pensionary benefits and the net deferment is mentioned in columns two, three, nine and ten respectively. The financial implications of salary are mentioned in columns four to seven.
A senior official said the retirements were generally high in June and July because the employees were recruited three decades ago in those months on the basis of school certificates.
In the absence of birth certificates, uneducated parents in villages enrolled their children in schools in June/July when the institutions reopened and the teachers marked their dates of birth in conformity with dates of admission and age in years to the class in which they joined.
He added that the employees stood to lose immediately a gratuity of ₹16 lakh on account of their continued service.
The employees also lost leave encashment of nearly ₹6-8 lakh, which got accumulated in their service period, general provident fund of ₹7-10 lakh, GLIC of about ₹3 lakh and surrender of 40% of their pension beside PRC arrears.