Nearly 22 lakh Maharashtra state government employees, including secondary and junior college teachers and non-teaching staff, have decided to go on indefinite strike from Monday demanding implementation of 6th Pay Commission.
    
Around 30,000 university and college teachers across the state are already on indefinite 'cease work' strike from July 14 demanding implementation of 6th pay Commission and regularisation of around 10,000 teachers affected by NET/SET
from 1991 and 2000 among others.
    
The state government employees and secondary school and junior college teachers would be on strike under the banner of Maharashtriya Rajya Sarkari Madhyavarghi Sangatna, its convenor R G Karnik said. The Coordination committee of teachers organisations, Bombay (CCTOB) claimed that the measures undertaken by the government will lead to the government employees and teachers losing heavily in their emoluments.
    
"Although new scales have been announced, all of us stand to lose heavily because HRA (house rent allowance), CLA
and transport allowance will now be calculated on the basis of old scales and each teacher/staff will be losing upto thousands of rupees on this account every year," CCTOB said.

The two main demands of those who are on strike are -- allowances linked to 6th Pay Commission scales and other benefits be extended to state government employees, and all primary, secondary and junior college teachers get the same scales as prescribed for teachers in central institutions,Karnik said.

In February this year, the state government had announced that it would implement the recommendations of the 6th Pay Commission with effect from 2006 due to which the state will face an additional burden of Rs 8091 crore every year. Also, it has to give Rs 16,370 crore as the arrears in next five years, Chief Minister Ashok Chavan [Images] had said. However, he noted that the decision on HRA, Transport allowance will be taken later.