Finance Minister AMA Muhith disclosed that the gazette for a permanent pay commission for government officials and workers will be published in October.
The minister revealed to reporters at his office on Thursday that public servants would also be eligible for a dearness allowance.
It would be the fulfilment of an election pledge, the minister said. A finance ministry official said the government is contemplating 20% dearness allowance for its 1.1m employees, in a bid to ease the inflationary pressure.
“The two or three increments in salaries of government officials and employees were not helpful for maintaining their living standards,” the official said.
Finance division officials said the finance minister had initially approved the proposal of a dearness allowance between Tk2,000 and Tk5,000 to help public servants cope with inflation. Inflation fell to 7.39% in August from 7.78% in July according to the statistics bureau but the month-to-month food price inflation increased by more than 2%. The allowance will cost the exchequer Tk3.50bn.
The government has not kept any block allocation in the current fiscal’s budget to meet the new pay scale which will require the government to spend Tk2.5bn every month in addition to regular salaries.
The government announced the seventh national pay scale in 2009 fixing the highest salary at Tk40,000 and lowest at Tk4,100. The last pay scale came with an average 52% increase on the basic salary of public servants. This enhanced pay scale required the government an additional amount of Tk62.22bn annually.
