On the New Year's eve, the Odisha government announced 3 percent hike in the dearness allowance (DA) for its employees on Friday.
Apart from the DA, the government has also effected a correspondent increase in Dearness Relief (DR) for pensioners by 3 percent.
With the fresh announcement, the DA of the State government employees has increased from the present 28 percent to 31 per cent.
The enhanced DA and DR will be applicable retrospectively from July 1, 2021, and will benefit around 7.5 lakh staffers and pensioners.
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has also announced that government employees, who had earlier received 50 percent of their hiked salary under the 7th Pay Commission from January 2016 to August 2017, will get 30 percent of the arrears.
The Odisha government's sudden move to hike dearness allowance (DA) of the government employees and pensioners comes just two months after it had hiked the DA by 11% in October 2021.