Share photos, interesting details of holidays, government tells staff

New Delhi: All central government employees should be encouraged to share photos and interesting details of their holidays, the Centre has said.

Easing norms for processing Leave Travel Concession (LTC) -- which allows grant of leave and ticket reimbursement to eligible central government employees to travel to their home towns and other places, it said that employees' claims need to be settled in a month.

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

A senior official in the DoPT said such photos and details can also be shared on social media and in-house magazines of the department or professional forum of employees on the concerned organisation's website.

Under the existing rules, government servants are required to inform their controlling officers before the journey on LTC is undertaken. "It has now been decided that the leave sanctioning authority shall obtain a self-certification from the employee regarding the proposed LTC journey," it said.

The move comes after the Centre received references regarding procedural difficulties being faced by the employees in making applications and settlement of LTC claims.

"This Department is in receipt of a number of references regarding the procedural difficulties faced by the government employees in application and settlement of the 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.

"It is alleged that in some cases, processing of LTC claims takes unduly long time, particularly when the employee and the sanctioning authorities are located at different stations. To remove these bottlenecks, it has been decided to simplify the procedure of application and make the procedure of processing of LTC claims time bound," the DoPT said in a directive issued to secretaries of all departments.

"Efforts should be made to reduce the duration of processing of LTC applications or claims at the earliest. The maximum time limit should be strictly adhered to and non-compliance of time limit should be adequately explained," it said.

There are about 50 lakh central government employees.