Finance Minister AMA Muhith yesterday surprised his ministry colleagues by enquiring whether public servants’ pay grades improved if they got the much-talked-about time scale and selection grade.
The minister asked the question in a comment that he wrote on a note sent to him by the Bangladesh Secretariat Personal Officers’ Association (BSPOA).
In its note, the BSPOA requested the minister to bring back time scale and selection grade provisions in the government employees’ pay structure.
Before being dropped from the recently implemented 8th pay scale, the two controversial provisions used to ensure pay grade improvement for those public servants whose promotions remained stalled for various bureaucratic reasons.
However, the new pay scale scrapped the two provisions – saying they bred corruption and favouritism – and introduced flat yearly increment for all government employees.
“I used to think that time scale and selection grade did not change public servants’ salary grades. Please discuss,” Muhith wrote on the BSPOA note and forwarded to the officials of his ministry.
The note, signed by BSPOA Chairman Md Abdul Kuddus Khan, informed the minister that they their status in the new pay scale was lower than what it was in the previous scale. The note also said that they had more chances of getting pay grade improvements in the previous pay structure.
In August last year, when the new pay scale was under the consideration of the ministry, Muhith said that the two provisions – time scale and selection grade – were clear to him and the decision to scrap them would be reconsidered.
Muhith’s yesterday’s comment on the note came as a shock to many Finance Ministry officials, particularly because it comes after nearly a month after the new pay structure had been implemented.
“We are shocked to know that the finance minister did not know that civil servants’ pay grades changed if they got time scale and selection grade,” an official said seeking anonymity.
“If he did not know that then I wonder how, in the first place, he supported the pay commission’s recommendation to drop the two provisions,” he said.
The gazette for the new pay scale was issued on December 15 and it was implemented for 2.1 million public servants with retrospective effect from July 1, 2015.