8th Pay Commission: Government employees are in trouble! Salary will increase by this much as soon as fitment factor becomes 4.0

New Delhi. These days, there is only one hot topic of discussion among the Central Government employees and pensioners – the 8th Pay Commission and the fitment factor given in it. Everyone is eager to know what the fitment factor is going to be fixed by the government this time. If we look at the old data, during the 7th Pay Commission implemented in the year 2016, the fitment factor was fixed at 2.57. At the same time, when the Sixth Pay Commission came in the year 2006, the fitment factor for it was kept at 1.86. This time the expectations are much bigger.

What is fitment factor and how does your salary change?

Many people do not know what the fitment factor is. According to a recent report by Mint, the fitment factor is actually a multiplier. It is directly used to revise the basic pay and pension of government employees. This has a direct and big impact on your take-home salary.

The formula to calculate this is very easy. Under this, the existing basic pay is multiplied by the fixed fitment factor to arrive at the revised basic pay. For example, if at present the basic pay of a government employee is Rs 18,000 and the government applies the fitment factor 2.57, then after multiplication the new basic pay directly becomes Rs 46,260. Since it was 1.86 in the Sixth Pay Commission, now in view of the current inflation and huge demands of employee organizations, employees are expecting a ‘terrible’ salary hike from the Eighth Pay Commission.

How much can be the fitment factor in the 8th Pay Commission?

A big statement from Bankbazaar CEO Adil Shetty has come out on this entire matter. He says that the Seventh Pay Commission had fixed the fitment factor of 2.57 in the year 2016. But if we talk about the last decade (10 years), the retail inflation rate in India has increased by about 56%. Due to this back-breaking inflation, the purchasing power of government employees i.e. their ability to buy the goods they need has reduced significantly. In such a situation, while constituting the Eighth Pay Commission, the government will have to look at the needs of more than one crore employees and pensioners and also strike a precise balance between the burden on the government exchequer.

Adil Shetty further said that market experts and experts estimate that this time the fitment factor is likely to be between 2.28 to 2.86. If the government fixes the fitment factor at 2.86, the minimum basic pay will directly jump from Rs 18,000 to Rs 51,480. This new mathematics fits perfectly with the inflation figures that have increased since 2016.

Why are employee organizations adamant on Fitment Factor 4.0?

On the other hand, central employee unions have started putting pressure on the government this time by demanding a bumper increase in salaries. There is a strong demand of most of the government employee organizations that the fitment factor should be kept at least 3 in the Eighth Pay Commission. At the same time, some employee organizations are adamant on the demand of keeping it straight as 4.0. If the government accepts this demand, there will be a ‘huge’ increase in the salaries of the employees.

These employee organizations clearly believe that a bigger and better fitment factor is very important for the betterment of government employees, their better standard of living, increasing daily needs and to deal with skyrocketing inflation. His argument is that the salary and pension of central government employees is revised only once in every 10 years, hence in view of this long interval, it is the right of the employees to be given a reasonable and strong fitment factor.