With no separate budgetary allocation and the fact that no other neighbouring country has one, the finance ministry is going through a dilemma regarding the formation of a permanent pay commission for the public servants, that too at the tail end of the government’s tenure.
Last month, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced that a permanent pay commission for public servants would be formed by the end of this month.
“The Economic Relations Division (ERD) has already sent a brief about the formation of a permanent pay commission to the Finance Division following Finance Minister AMA Muhith’s directives,” said a senior official of the finance division.
He also said apart from proposals for forming a permanent pay commission, the ERD brief also contained a proposal for a normal pay scale for the 1.1 million government employees.
The government is also reportedly undecided about whether to form a permanent pay commission or to revise the existing pay scale incorporating a 20% “dearness allowance.”
According to existing arrangements that is a normal pay scale, the government adjusts the salaries and allowances of government staffs once in every few years to accommodate inflationary trends.
The dearness allowance, found in India, is calculated as a percentage of a citizen’s basic salary to mitigate the impact of inflation on people belonging to the low income group.
The last time a temporary commission was formed was in 2009.
Only the staffs of Bangladesh Police have since had a revision in the pay scale in which they had been given a 30% hike.
A permanent pay commission, if formed, would regularly look after the compatibility of the government employees’ salaries with inflationary trends and suggest adjustments.
According to official figures, rate of inflation in August stood at 7.39%.
Sources in the finance division said even though the government had assured the public servants about forming a permanent pay commission, officials have come to know that no other country in the subcontinent had any such commission.
India formed a permanent commission a few years ago, but that body is not permanent anymore. The salaries of government officials in India are adjusted every once in a while in line with inflationary trends.
An official of the Implementation Wing of the Finance Division said none of the pay commissions formed in the past had been permanent. The government would have to recruit permanent human resources and need huge funds for operating a permanent pay commission.
He also said the question on whether to mobilise funds for a permanent commission now depended on the finance minister’s decision.
Finance Secretary Fazle Kabir told the Dhaka Tribune that the Finance Division officials were now busy working on the formation of a permanent pay commission. They were now preparing a summary of the ERD proposals for the finance minister.
However, some government policymakers have said an impermanent pay scale would be better than a permanent pay commission for Bangladesh.
They said if a commission was formed, the government would have to spend around Tk2.5bn every year in addition to the regular salary of the public servants.
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 up with a 52% hike, on an average, in the basic salary of public servants.
That enhanced pay scale required the government to spend an additional amount of Tk62.22bn annually.
