Saturday, April 23, 2016

ACTION ON ANONYMOUS/PSEUDONYMOUS COMPLAINTS

PARTIAL WITHDRAWAL FROM NPS ORDERS ISSUED BY PFRDA

Thursday, April 21, 2016

D.A ORDER FOR GDS.


ACTION ON ANONYMOUS/PSEUDONYMOUS COMPLAINTS

LTC 80 Air Fare of Air India – Updated Domestic LTC Fares

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. 

Transfer/Postings in HAG of the Indian Postal Service, Group-A

Govt Devising Way To Implement 7th Pay Commission Award

Action on Anonymous/Pseudonymous Complaints

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.

This is the second major stepback by the government on provident fund in less than two months and comes close on the heels of it withdrawing the budget announcement
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.
Even postal-orders of rupees 1, 2, 5 and 7 were discontinued through RTI petition and print of revised commission of postal orders were affected after more than a decade of revision.
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

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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

Holding next AIC at Kolkata during 10th to 12th August 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



POSB Order No. 3/2016 Introduction of New Scheme SSA - circulation of revised notification regarding


SSA Gazatte Notification : View / Download

SB Order 03/2016 PDF : View / Download

DA Order-- Department of Post issued.