Goa govt launches salary on demand scheme for govt staff

PANAJI: Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant on Wednesday launched the Mukhyamantri Saral Pagar Yojana, which will allow government employees to avail of salary in advance based on wages earned for the month. He also announced that a special housing loan scheme for government employees will be introduced in the 2024-25 fiscal.
“Many of our class B and C category staff, particularly C category staff, face problems if salary is delayed and then tend to borrow from money lenders, cooperative banks, relatives or through credit cards at a steep interest rate. They need an advance before their salary is paid,” said Sawant at the event where the scheme was launched.
The Goa government has tied up with a private firm, Refyne, which is a salary-on-demand platform. Refyne will allow government employees to withdraw a portion of their salary in the middle of the month by charging 0.5% interest.
“This scheme will benefit a lot of our employees. We started it with the staff of the human resource corporation and found that it has worked very well over the past 3 months. After getting a good response, we decided to roll it out for all government staff,” the chief minister said.
He also assured government employees that a new housing scheme will be introduced in the next year’s budget. In May 2020, the state government abruptly withdrew the House Building Allowance (HBA) scheme that had been in force since 1988. Under the scheme, the beneficiary government employee had to pay only 2% of the interest rate on their housing loan while the remaining was borne by the state government.