Finance Minister AMA Muhith has brought back the official order of the Eighth Pay Scale from the Law Ministry and is now reviewing it, sources said.
The Implementation Wing of the Finance Ministry sent the order to the Law Ministry for vetting on Thursday without showing a summary to the finance minister.
The minister now wants to see for himself whether or not all his directives have been incorporated in the order.
Senior Finance Secretary Mahbub Ahmed has said earlier that the gazette notification for the new pay scale is likely to be published in the first week of November.
According to sources, due to the rigid stance of an additional secretary of the Implementation Wing, several recommendations from the Finance Ministry had not been included in the official order.
That additional secretary has now gone on to a few days’ leave in order to escape the finance minister’s reprimands.
One of the biggest debates centring the implementation of the new pay scale has been the issue of scrapping the selection grade and time scale provisions.
While the new pay scale has been finalised without the two provisions, a section of government employees have been demanding that the government keeps the two provisions.
According to a source, a total of 306 officials of the 24th BCS recruitment batch have been enjoying time scale and selection grade benefits from July 2. But if the new pay scale is implemented with a retrospective affect from June 30, no government employees would be entitled to these benefits.
Yesterday, a group of government employees of different classes from 26 departments of the government staged demonstrations mostly outside Dhaka demanding that the two provisions be kept in the new pay structure.
On September 7, the cabinet endorsed the eighth pay scale for civil servants with a minimum basic salary of Tk8,250 and maximum Tk86,000.
