Sikkim govt to give advance & additional increments to employees having 2 or more children

Gangtok: To boost the population of indigenous communities in Sikkim, the state government has decided to provide advance and additional increments to its employees having two or three children with retrospective effect from January 1 this year, according to a notification.

The state government employees possessing Sikkim Subject Certificate/Certificate of Identification shall get one advanced increment for having two surviving children, the Department of Personnel Secretary Rinzing Chewang Bhutia said in a notification issued on May 10.

Those employees having three surviving children shall get one additional increment, he said, adding anyone of the spouses can claim for advance increment on mutual understanding.

The scheme shall be effective from January 1, 2023 and only those employees whose second and third child is born on or after January 1, 2023, shall be eligible for the scheme, Bhutia said.

The benefits of the scheme shall not be applicable in case of adoption, the Department of Personnel Secretary said.

The scheme providing financial incentives to state government employees has come four months after Sikkim Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang promised sops to overcome a low fertility rate among local indigenous people in the Himalayan state.

"The low fertility rate among the local indigenous population is a matter of serious concern in Sikkim...We must do everything in our hands to reverse the process," Tamang had said at an event in Gangtok in January this year.

Sikkim is the least populous state of India with a population of around seven lakh people.

The state has the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) at 1.1 which is the lowest in the country.

The chief minister has repeatedly expressed concern at the declining population of the indigenous Lepcha, Bhatia and Nepalis communities and said that his government was committed to take whatever incentives required to increase the numbers of the local people.