Hike In Dearness Allowance For Central Govt Employees In January 2022?

New Delhi: The new year is likely to bring glad tidings for Central government employees under the 7th Pay Commission.

According to reports, the Central government is expected to hike the dearness allowance of its workers yet again. This time, the employees of the Central government will get a hike of 3 per cent in dearness allowance (DA), the reports said. This will hike up the salary of all government employees.

Hindi daily Prabhat Khabar, quoted India Today as saying that the salary of Central government employees will increase by up to Rs 20,000. Typically, the government raises the DA of Central government employees twice every year i.e. between January and July.

Dearness Allowance or DA is the cost-of-living adjustment allowance that the government pays to public sector employees as well as pensioners who worked in the same sector. DA makes up for a large chunk of the gross salary of the employees of the public sector. It is mainly given to the employees to offset the impact of inflation.

As of now, central government employees are paid a Dearness Allowance of 31 per cent. The most recent hikes were given in July and October 2021, after a months-long freeze in the allowance due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In view of the pandemic, the Union Government had frozen the three additional instalments of DA and DR, which were due from January 1, 2020, July 1, 2020, and January 1, 2021.

During these hikes, the government did not pay the arrears to its employees given the pandemic situation.

Notably, the government has not given any official statement regarding the likely hike. The news is only based on certain reports. There has been no official confirmation from the Centre’s side regarding this DA hike, nor has it announced when it will be implemented.