7th Pay Commission | Education Allowance for ‘Differently-abled Kids’ Increased & Other News

Differently-abled kids finally come under the consideration by the Government for the 7^th Pay Commission. The parents with (differently-abled kids) who work as central government employees will now get 54,000 Indian Rupees as allowance as opposed to 30,000 Rupees before. The education allowance for all the children of central government employees has been hiked under the 7^th Pay Commission keeping in line with inflation and tuition fees in schools today.

How the 7^th Pay Commission fares against the 6^th Pay Commission for the differently-abled kids?

The education allowance for the children of central government employees is increased to 2,250 per month as opposed to 1,500 per month under the 6^th pay commission. The 7^th pay commission panel has recommended the allowance for the education of differently-abled kids to be doubled to that of normal children which translates to 4,500 Rupees per month. Earlier the education allowance for these children was fixed at 3,000 Rupees per month.

The 7^th pay commission wants to ensure that the differently-abled children get the special attention they deserve and thus have also increased the hostel expenses for them which will be capped at 6,750 Rupees per month. Earlier the maximum expense the Government would bear for the hostel facility was 4,500 Rupees per month.

Things looked contradictory for the differently-abled kids before the 7^th Pay Commission.

Before showing the differently-abled children some love under the 7^th Pay Commission, the government taxed the equipment for these kids quite heavily ranging from a feeble 5% to a whopping 18%. These products or equipment were earlier exempted from any kind of excise or duty. The Government claimed that all the essential items for a person remained tax-free under GST. This garnered the BJP Government huge criticism for preventing the poor handicapped or differently-abled people items that are ’essential’ to them.

Before the decision of the 7^th Pay Commission, Rahul Gandhi had flagged the BJP Government’s decision calling it ‘disablity tax’ under his speeches which made the Government to later fix the tax at 5% on all these items. These items include hearing aid, wheelchairs, specially abled watches and other items. The 7^th Pay Commission by increasing the allowance for these kids wants to ensure they get the special treatment they deserve.

Source: India.com

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