At last: 20% allowance approved for CDA employees

Approves special allowance for authority’s over 14,000 employees

ISLAMABAD:

The Capital Development Authority (CDA) board has approved a special allowance of 20 percent of basic pay for authority’s over 14,000 employees.

Former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf had approved the allowance for federal employees on his last day in office in 2013.

The implementation was delayed as the previous CDA management maintained that the decision was not applicable to the authority.

Employees of the CDA and many other departments had petitioned the Islamabad High Court (IHC) for the allowance. The court ordered in favour of the employees but the government filed an intra-court appeal against the judgment.

The government maintained in the court that if the allowance was paid to all the federal government employees it would cost the national exchequer around Rs50 billion a year.

A CDA spokesperson said the authority did not implement the decision in past as it was facing financial crunch.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 22^nd, 2015.