Chennai, The Tamil Nadu government's pension bill is set to increase to Rs 40,000 crore this financial year as around 20,000 government employees are retiring from service.

As many as 5,200 Tamil Nadu government employees retired on Tuesday and around 15,000 will retire in December 2022, thus leading to a huge number of vacancies in various government departments. The state government will however have to deal with a huge volume of payments to the retired employees including their benefits and recurring monthly pension.

The state government has spent an amount of Rs 26,410 crore in the financial year 2021-22 as retirement benefits and pension to the employees retired and now the estimated expenditure for 2022-23 for retirement benefits will be around Rs 40,000 crore.

However, a senior official with the state Treasury Department told IANS that this was not the amount for those retiring this year and instead this includes regular pensioners, family pensioners, and those opting for one-time settlement.

The official said that the state government has funds to settle the benefits of the retired government employees, which include four senior Additional Secretaries and 45 other officials from the state Secretariat.

Sources in the state government told IANS that the government was not in a hurry to recruit the replacements for those who are retired and who are retiring by December 2022. It is learned that the state has now a total of only 9 lakh government employees instead of the sanctioned strength of 15 lakh. While this huge deficit in the number of government employees may cause administrative difficulties, the DMK government will not be posting new hands all at once and will conduct recruitments in a phased manner.