Saturday, April 23, 2016
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Govt puts on hold new Provident Fund withdrawal norms till July 31
The
Govt puts on hold new Provident Fund withdrawal norms till July 31. New PF
withdrawal norms proposes to bar withdrawal of employer’s contribution to the
provident fund corpus until the employee attains the age of 58 years.
On
the issue of new Provident Fund withdrawal norms, the government today decided
to keep the implementation of new norms in abeyance for three more months till
July 31st.
The
announcement comes in the midst of protest by labour unions in several parts of
the country against the new norms.
People
have also launched online campaign against the decision, which was to be
implemented from February 10 but was later put on hold till April 30.
In
February, the ministry had issued a notification restricting 100 per cent
withdrawal of provident fund by members after unemployment of more than two
months.
Source:
DDI News
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Postal Officers felicitated for outstanding work in SSA and APY
SSPOs
Kolhapur Division and SPOs, Thane West Division all set to receive Civil
Services Day awards from Hon'ble Chief Minister of Maharashtra State
Shri Devendra Fatnavis today in a function at Mumbai.
The awards are for
outstanding performances in opening of SSA by SSPOs Kolhapur Division
and APY by SPOs Thane West Division. Both these officers have done good
job in the year 2015-16 and make the circle proud.
Commemorative Postage Stamp on the "FIRE SERVICES OF INDIA"
Department
of Posts has brought out a Commemorative Postage Stamp on the "FIRE
SERVICES OF INDIA" on the occasion of Fire Services Day at the National
Workshop on ''An Integrated Approach to Fire Safety'' on 14.04.2016. This stamp
was released by Shri T.Murthy, Member (Operations) in the gracious presence of
Shri Kiren Rijiju, Minister of State for Home Affairs.
FLASHNEWS 19/04/2016 Dept of Posts has brought out a Commemorative Postage Stamp on the "Fire Services Of India"
Government rolls back restrictions on withdrawal of provident fund.
The government on Tuesday announced a complete and unconditional
rollback of new norms that barred employees from withdrawing their
provident fund corpus before retirement, over a month after it scrapped
the Union budget proposal to tax employees provident fund savings at
retirement.
Labour and Employment Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, who on Monday said
the new rules would be partially relaxed and their implementation
deferred, announced the climb-down on Tuesday evening, minutes after his
Ministry reiterated Monday’sdecision in a statement.
Protests against the new norms that started in Bengaluru on Monday
turned violent on Tuesday, prompting Union Labour Secretary Shankar
Agarwal to assess the situation with the PF Department by afternoon.
Thereafter, Mr. Agarwal recommended that the Minister announce a
complete rollback. “We are cancelling the February 10 notification
[restricting complete withdrawal of PF savings] and the old system will
continue. This was a demand of the workers and I have announced the
roll-back in their interest,” Mr. Dattatreya said.
He said the decision would soon be ratified by the trustees of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) soon.
Under the rules notified in February, employees were not allowed to
withdraw their entire PF amount if they had quit or lost their present
jobs, making it mandatory for them to wait till 58 years of age for a
final settlement. Following initial protests from workers, the Ministry
deferred the implementation of the rules from April 1, 2016 to May 1.
While deferring this by another three months on Monday, the Minister
said the norms would be relaxed to allow employees buying a house,
getting a child married and pursuing professional education and
healthcare to withdraw their entire PF savings. A similar exemption was
granted to employees who join a government organization.
In a statement on the rollback, the Ministry explained that the new
norms were aimed at ensuring that employees didn’t fritter away their
retirement savings during their working life and spend their old age in
penury. “The objective was to provide a minimum social security to the
workers at the time of retirement. It was noticed that over 80 per cent
of the claims settled by EPFO belonged to pre-mature withdrawal of
funds, treating the EPF accounts as savings accounts, and not a social
security instrument,” it said.
“In order to address the issues, the amendment stated above was carried
out with the consent of trade unions and with the intention of promoting
a decent accumulation of provident fund for the members at the end of
their working lifetimes,” it said.
EPF accounts are mandatory for firms hiring at least 20 employees and
are funded by employees paying 12 per cent of their salary with a
matching contribution from employers.
Under the norms that now stand reversed, employees could withdraw their
own share of PF savings along with the interest on them. The balance,
comprising the employer’s contribution, was to be withheld by the EPFO
till the employee attained 58 years of age.
Source : www.thehindu.com
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Postal Department rationalises postal tariffs after a long struggle by RTI activists
It refers to response dated March 29, 2016 from Department of Posts
wherein the Department ultimately rationalised foreign-mail tariffs
according to equal tariff-rise for equal rise in slab-weight.
Earlier
at several slabs, an article sent in two parts surprisingly used to
cost less than if sent in one parcel! It was only after Central
Information Commission after being shocked to know that suggestions in
this regard went unnoticed for several decades directed for providing
working sheets on the logical suggestions.
Even postal authorities were surprised to notice that the suggestions
published in a three-decade back media interview dated June 23, 1986
were repeatedly replied that "Suggestions have been noted, and will be considered at next revision of international postal-tariffs", meaning thereby that in practice there is no value of suggestions sent to government departments.
It is time that Speed Post tariffs are also rationalized where presently
postal tariffs for ordinary unreliable mail is surprisingly less than
fast, reliable and economical Speed Post tariff at many slabs. Speed
Post tariffs should be same for throughout the country with equal tariff
rise for equal rise in weight slabs. Speed Post tariffs (inclusive of
service tax) can be revised as Rs. 20 per every 50 gms or part for complete nation universally.
RTI response reveals that Post Cards and Inland Letters have lost their
utility with these highly subsidized postal-items being misused for
business-purposes. Inland Letters should be abolished, and Post Cards
should only be in sponsored Meghdoot-category to be priced at rupee one
also because coins of 25 paise are no more minted, and those of 50-paise
are practically out of circulation.
Postal-tariff should be minimum rupee one even for sending registered
newspapers. With multi-fold cost-rise in newspaper publication, it is
senseless to put Department of Posts under heavy loss by continuing with
such heavy subsidy in postal tariffs.
(Mr. Subhash Chandra Agrawal is a noted RTI activist)
Source:http://www.rtiindia.org/forum/172782-postal-department-rationalises-postal-tariffs-after-long.html
Friday, April 15, 2016
PMO likely to review India Post's progress on April 14
CLICK HERE FOR SEE DETAILS/ET NEWS
NEW DELHI: The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is likely to undertake a review of India Post on April 14 regarding action taken by the department for setting up its payments bank.
According to sources, PMO will also take stock of progress made by
Department of Post (DoP) to improve functioning through initiatives like
e-commerce and IT modernization.
The Public Investment Board (PIB) has already approved the Rs
800-crore proposal from India Post for setting up a payments bank and
after the PMO review, it will be sent to the Cabinet for final approval.
"Top officials of DoP will brief PMO about the progress made so far
by the department in improving efficiency and what is the latest update
regarding the payments bank," a source said.
The meeting with PMO is likely to take place on April 14, the source added.
The PMO is monitoring the progress made by DoP to improve its
functioning and utilizing the vast network of post offices across the
country for financial inclusion.
Earlier this year also, PMO had taken a review of DoP with special
focus on the implementation of proposals submitted by a task force on
leveraging the department's post office network.
India Post has selected Deloitte to advise it on setting up a payments bank.
The India Post payments bank will primarily target unbanked and
under-banked customers in rural, semi-rural and remote areas, with a
focus on providing simple deposit products and money remittance
services.
The pilot for the payments bank is set to start from January 2017 and the full-fledged operations may start by March.
As many as 40 international financial conglomerates including World
Bank and Barclays have shown interest to partner the postal department
for setting up the bank.
For strengthening the e-commerce infrastructure, DoP has set up 57
new state-of-the-art parcel centres across the country through which
more than 400 e-commerce companies are being serviced.
Source : Economictimes
Empanelment of Shri Jitendra Gupta, 1989 batch of Indian Postal Service for holding the post of Joint Secretary or equivalent at the Centre(Initial)
7th Pay Commission: Government employees to get in hand only 50% of increased salary?
Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - 22:37
New
Delhi: Government is looking at a scheme for encouraging its employees to
invest part of their 7th pay commission salary hike in a fund which would be
used for recapitalisation of state-owned banks.
High
income government official, according to officials, could be roped in to invest
in the fund by offering lucrative incentives like tax break or higher return.
As
per the proposal, higher income government staff from the rank of section
officer may be asked to shell out 50 percent of increased salary towards bank
capitalisation bonds, the officials said.
Top
officials of the finance ministry had preliminary discussion over the issue
last week, officials said. However, no decision has been taken yet, they said,
adding that Committee of Secretaries is looking into the matter and various
alternatives are being considered.
This
proposal is being considered to find more resources for recapitalisation of
public sector banks which are saddled with gross non-performing assets (NPAs)
of Rs.3.61 trillion at the end of December 2015, as against Rs.39,859 crore in
the private sector.
Gross
NPA ratio as percentage of advances rose to 7.30 percent while for private
banks, it stood at 2.36 percent as of December-end.
RBI
has asked public sector banks to clean up balancesheets by March next year.
Cleaning to books would require additional capital infusion than what has been
envisage in the ‘Indradhanush’.
Last
year, the government had announced a revamp plan ‘Indradhanush’ to infuse
Rs.70,000 crore in state-owned banks over four years, while they will have to
raise a further Rs.1.1 trillion from markets to meet their capital requirements
in line with global risk norms Basel-III. In line with the blueprint, PSU banks
were given Rs.25,000 crore in the last fiscal and an equal amount is planned
for the current fiscal.
As
per the plan, Rs.10,000 crore each would be infused in 2017-18 and 2018-19. It
is believed that the government provided as much as Rs.70,000 crore in the
Union Budget 2016-17 for implementation of Seventh Pay Commission for 47 lakh
government employees and 52 lakh pensioners.
While
the Budget did not provide an explicit overall provision number, the government
had said the 7th Pay Commission hike has been built in as interim allocation
for different ministries and Budget numbers were credible.
Implementation
of the pay commission report in toto is to cost the government Rs.1.02 lakh
crore.
Source
: http://zeenews.india.com
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Prime Ministers New 15 Point Programme for Welfare of Minorities - measures to give special consideration to minorities in recruitment - annual report for the year 2015 - 16 regarding.
Return of assets and liabilities under Lokpal : Date extended upto 31st July'16
The date
of filing returns of assets and liabilities for public servants under Lokpal
has again extended from 15.07. 16 to 31.07.2016 vide gazette notification dated
11th April 2016.
ASSET AMENDMENT RULES 2016 - EXTENSION OF LAST DATE FROM 15TH APRIL 2016 TO 31ST JULY 2016 FOR FILING RETURNS FOR THE YEAR 2014 AND 2015 UNDER SECTION 44 OF LOKPAL & LOKAYUKTAS ACT, 2013
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
INTRODUCTION OF NEW SCHEME SSA - CIRCULATION OF REVISED NOTIFICATION BY THE DEPARTMENT & SB ORDER 03/2016
Introduction of New Scheme SSA - circulation of revised notification regarding
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