Overtime to Customs/Excise officers - a pittance?
CUSTOMS and Central Excise officers supervising export related activities are paid overtime. The amount paid to the officers is a fraction of what the Government collects from the exporters.
An Excise officer writes to us:
The officers are paid a pittance as overtime charges as low as Rs 15/85 per hour on working days and Rs 22/15 per hour on holidays - the rate is vogue since 1994 after which two Pay Commissions were implemented.
The overtime as per Factory's Act would be a minimum of 1.5 times the regular wage. Here the same is less then alms received by beggars. In this background, you are requested to bring the atrocious fact to the light of the authorities concerned and bring succour to the officers.
Most officers are reluctant to bring this fact to light because of the sheer embarrassment of quoting the amount.
I sincerely hope that this would be taken in the right spirit and justice is done.
It would be pertinent to add that the Railways vide RBE No 67/2011 dtd 16-05-2011 revised the night duty allowance taking into consideration the hike in DA.
It is really humiliating to pay 63 rupees and forty paise to a Superintendent of Central Excise (of course whether he is a Central Excise officer itself is now doubtful) for attending to export clearances for four hours.
We are told that many officers don't claim this paltry OT at all and one reason could be they collect far more than that from the exporters. But that, certainly, is no good reason to give a pittance as OT. If that be so, Government need not pay any salary at all! But now the salaries are reasonable and quite good.
Board should either consider giving a steep hike in OT or do abolish it altogether.