In a significant New Year announcement by the Centre, a decision has been taken to extend ‘Disability Compensation’ for all serving employees, if they get disabled in the line of duty while performing their service and are retained in service in spite of such disablement.
Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Friday informed that the move will provide a huge relief, especially to ‘young Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) personnel like CRPF, BSF, CISF and others since disability in performance of duties is generally reported in their case due to constraints of job requirement as well as hostile or difficult work – environment’.
The Narendra Modi government is making all efforts to simplify the rules and to do away with discriminatory clauses. The ultimate objective of all these new initiatives is to provide ease of living for the government servants even after they have superannuated and become pensioners or family pensioners or elder citizens, Singh said.
It is pertinent to mention that this new order will remove an anomaly in service rules, considering the hardship faced by the employees, since the earlier provisions of disability benefits under Central Civil Services(CCS) (EOP) Rules did not provide such compensation to those government servants who were appointed on or after 1.1.2004 and covered under National Pension System (NPS).
However, with the new order issued by the Department of Pensions in the Ministry of Personnel, the employees covered under NPS will also get benefits under Rule (9) of Extra Ordinary Pension (EOP).
In addition to above, in yet another reform in the Pension Rules, a decision was also taken to amend the rule and provide pension at enhanced rate to the family of an employee who died during service before completing the requisite service of minimum 7 years. As a result, now the family pension of 50% of the last pay is also admissible to the family of employees who die even before completing 7 years of service.