Tasmac employees get a salary hike of ₹2,000

Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation employees receive ₹2,000 hike; government implements measures to curb illicit liquor and drug use.

The State government has announced a hike of ₹2,000 for all the employees working in the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (Tasmac) with effect from April 1, said V. Senthilbalaji, Minister for Electricity, Prohibition and Excise in the Assembly on Tuesday.

In a reply to a question during the demand for grants for the Prohibition and Excise Department, he said the hike would be across the board for all 23,629 employees, comprising 6,567 supervisors, 14,636 sellers and 2,426 assistant sellers. The hike will result in an additional outgo of ₹64.08 crore per month for the State.

The State government had earned a revenue of ₹48,344 crore for the fiscal 2024-25 (subject to reconciliation) through excise and value added tax of liquor. It has brought in the Tamil Nadu Prohibition (Amendment) Act, 2024, to curb distribution of illicit liquor in the State. The amendment has increased punishment and has accorded powers to confiscate all movable properties used in committing the offence and to seal unlicensed places used for consumption of illicit liquor.

The State government, to curb the use of drugs and narcotics, has provided 50 hand-held oral fluid drug testing devices to the officials of the Enforcement Bureau of the Criminal Investigation Unit (EBCID). The hand-held devices will assist in faster detection of drug users and have increased the number of police awards given by the Chief Minister Police medal to 15 in 2025-26.

The Prohibition and Excise department would be computerising the EBCID by deploying digital forensic tools for web analytics, and OSINT (Out of the Box) tools, to control online drug smuggling.

A dedicated web portal for the EBCID would be launched for creating database of the criminal investigations for which an amount of ₹35 lakh has been allotted, Mr. Senthilbalaji said.