Share photos, interesting details of holidays: Govt to staff

New Delhi: All central government employees will soon be sharing their photos and interesting details of holidays.

Besides, they will be exempted from informing their controlling officers before going on holiday and a self-certification from them would suffice. These are some of the changes the Centre has decided to make in the relevant rules for availing Leave Travel Concession (LTC).

LTC allows grant of leave and ticket reimbursement to eligible central government employees to travel to their home towns and to other places. All LTC claims will be settled in a maximum of one-month's time, as per the new rules.

An additional ten days will be given to settle dues related to LTC travels by an employee in case he is posted away from the headquarters.

"Employees may be encouraged to share interesting insights and pictures, if any, of the destination he or she visited while availing LTC on an appropriate forum," the rules finalised by Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said.

The move comes in the wake of a number of references regarding the procedural difficulties faced by the government employees in application and settlement of LTC claims.

"Sometimes, the government servants claim that failure to follow the correct procedure was on account of a lack of knowledge of the rules or instructions while in the other cases the delay is caused in the late processing of LTC claims.

"To remove these bottlenecks, this department has decided to simplify the procedure of application and make the procedure of processing of LTC claims time bound," the DoPT said. It has sought comments from all concerned on the new guidelines within 15 days.

There are about 50 lakh central government employees.