PANJIM: The State government has now decided to extend the house building loan scheme (HBLS) to both — its employees and also to the employees of government-aided institutions.
A notification in this regard has been published in the Official Gazette, which will now provide relief to nearly 300 teachers and staff of government aided institutions, who were struggling to get the benefits after the government closed the erstwhile House Building Advance (HBA) scheme.
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As per the notification issued on September 2, 2022, the government has decided to extend the HBLS to its employees and the workers of the government aided institutions. Director of Education Shailendra Zingde has also filed his report before the Goa Human Rights Commission (GHRC), who had admitted a suo motu petition following a report ‘From May 2020, DoE keeps aided school teachers waiting for House Building Advance’ published by Herald dated August 17, 2022.
In his report Zingde has stated that as per notification dated December 13, 2021, the HBLS was started for government employees by extending the benefits of erstwhile HBA scheme. But it was not clear whether the new scheme was applicable to workers of government-aided institutions.
In May 2022, the Directorate of Education sought clarification from the Debt Management Division of Department of Finance so as to know whether the procedure stipulated in the notification or whether to follow the traditional procedure of granting HBA. The Debt Management Division in its reply allowed the department to adopt the traditional procedure to settle the earlier HBA cases. In August, the department again wrote to the Department of Finance to change the prescribed performa as per its requirements.
Accordingly the Department of Finance issued a notification dated August 21, 2022 extending the benefits of HBLS to employees of grant-in-aided institutions and the same was notified in Official Gazette dated September 2, 2022.
Meanwhile, the Commission has fixed the matter for next hearing on October 21.
