Government legislation ministry says non-autonomous district disaster teams qualify for special duty allowance

The government legislation ministry said that disaster-response departments and teams set up in non-autonomous districts qualify for a special duty allowance paid to local officials who handle disaster and safety work full time, answering an inquiry from Gyeonggi Province.

The interpretation turns on how the term "disaster-dedicated department" is read in the rules on local public officials' allowances. Officials who work continuously and directly on disaster and safety management are eligible for a special duty allowance of up to 80,000 won ($60) a month. Gyeonggi Province asked whether that definition reaches departments or teams established in a non-autonomous district of a city, where the district takes charge of disaster-related work across its jurisdiction — on the premise that the department is established under the city's ordinances, that it continuously handles the full range of disaster affairs in the district, and that the mayor has not separately specified who should receive the allowance. The answer was yes.

The ministry reasoned that the administrative guidance defining a disaster-dedicated department by the work it does — a department or team overseeing disaster-related duties listed in the disaster and safety management law — sets the scope by function and does not limit it to the headquarters of a local government.

It also pointed to the purpose of the allowance, introduced through a presidential decree revision on Jan. 5, 2024, to improve conditions for officials who work constantly on disaster and safety management. That need does not depend on whether the official works at city hall or at a district office, the ministry said.

The ministry addressed fairness directly, saying it would be unreasonable for departments in autonomous districts to receive the allowance while excluding only those in non-autonomous districts of cities with populations of at least 500,000, and that differentiating among officials covered by the same allowance system on the basis of their workplace alone is not rational.

It also rejected reading the allowance rules through the disaster and safety management law, saying the law's provisions on responsible agencies exist to assign who carries out and answers for the work, while the allowance rules exist to determine who is paid.

The ministry's answer, dated the 21st, means the allowance framework applies to district-level teams in cities that operate non-autonomous districts and have not issued separate instructions on which posts receive the money, on the same terms as to city headquarters staff.