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Tuesday 08-Dec-2009 Govt: No leave allowance in private tour packages
By  Traveltechie Bureau | Mumbai

With an order from the government now in place, private package tour operators will find it difficult to get Central government employees as their clients. The government has debarred its employees from going on a holiday taking a package tour operated by private agencies, if they want to avail their Leave Travel Allowance (LTA). According to the new order, which has been issued by Department of Personnel and Training, the government employees have been suggested that if they want to take a package tour and to avail LTA at the same time, they should stick to such facilities provided by IRCTC, a government of India enterprise, and State Tourism Development Corporations, units owned and operated by state governments.

Since the IRCTC is also offering tour packages involving air travel in sectors like Delhi-Leh, Delhi-Srinagar, Jaipur-Goa, Chennai/Calcutta-Port Blair etc, the DoPT order, a copy of which is with newspaper ,said, "It has now been decided to allow the reimbursement of air fare along with rail and road fare in the case of journey of government servants in tours offered by the IRCTC.But in this case, the IRCTC has to certify the three component separately and booking of tickets has to be done by incompliance with the instructions of the government ." Along with earlier decision, the current one is aimed at conserving the resources within the government agencies and also to discourage employees from submitting false bills to claimer-imbursement.