The employees of central government have yet another reason to cheer as the Union Government has announced to hike the dearness allowance of employees and pensioners by 6 percent from existing 16 per cent to 22 per cent with immediate effect.

The new DA rates would be applicable from January 1, 2009 according to Home Minister P Chidambaram, who was addressing a press conference after the cabinet meeting.

Barely a week after the vote-on-account, the government has announced measures that are being broadly referred to as the third stimulus package.

Health minister Anbumani Ramadoss will have to answer the Supreme Court for his decision to close three public sector units manufacturing many life-saving vaccines. On January 15, 2008, the production licenses of Pasteur Institute of India (Coonor), BCG Vaccine Laboratory (Chennai) and Central Research Institute (Kasauli) were cancelled.

Today a warning was extended to private airlines, which are hiking their airfares by forming cartels, by Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel who announced that strict action would be taken against those indulging in such activities.

Mr. Patel said, "As far as raising airfares is concerned, they are outside the domain of the government as airfares are fixed by market forces."

The industry has been requested by foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee to cut salaries instead of cutting jobs to fight the bad times of financial meltdown across the globe, which has led to major cut in jobs in recent past.

According to Mr. Mukherjee, who also holds the charge of the finance ministry, there was a need to protect the labour force, even if it meant a slight reduction in emoluments.

Government's auditing regulator, the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) has pointed out some serious fallouts in the accounts of some government departments. CAG, in a report on government's accounts for 2007-08, tabled in parliament on Friday, holds responsibility to the finance secretary and the expenditure secretary for the report preparation and anomalies.

The report by CAG, pointing misuse of funds, maintains, "Union Government made a provision for transfer of central plan assistance of Rs51,259 crore directly to state/district level autonomous bodies... for implementation of centrally sponsored schemes."