The government will execute a separate pay scale for the staff of Bangladesh Bank and the four state-owned commercial banks within its tenure, official sources said.
Bank and Financial Institutions Division secretary Dr Aslam Alam, however, told the Dhaka Tribune on Wenesday that the government would implement the separate pay scale of state-owned banks and the central bank after the consent of the prime minister.
He also said several verbal surveys conducted by the division at the five institutions had found that the response was “not bad at all,” but a portion of the staff had opposed the separate pay scale.
After it is signed by the secretaries of the secretary committee, the recommendation for the separate pay scale will go to the prime minister for approval, Alam said.
A government committee last week finalised the pay scale with 11 grades instead of the existing 20.
The committee, led by Cabinet Secretary Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, also decided that the staff would pay their income taxes and generally salaries would increase by Tk2,000 - Tk3,000 more than the finance minister’s initial recommendations.
Initially, Sonali, Agrani and Janata banks were supposed to get the new pay structure as corporate banks. Now Rupali Bank has been added to the list.
In private sector banks, the entry level salaries of an officer and a staff is Tk30,000 and Tk15,000 respectively, and the salary of a CEO and a managing director is Tk400,000-900,000.
The Banking Division recommended that the basic salary for those at the highest grade should be Tk52,000 and Tk5,000 for the lowest grade.
In the existing 20-grade scale, the highest basic salary is Tk33,500 and the lowest is Tk4,100. Both state banks and the central bank will have the same pay scale. The managing directors and deputy managing directors of the state banks who are appointed on a contractual basis will not be included in the new pay scale.
An officer of the country’s largest state commercial bank Sonali Bank, Sulaiman Hossain, told the Dhaka Tribune that after implementation of separate pay scale for bank, many employees would be in deep financial trouble since they had taken house loans from the bank.
“Repayment of loans will be difficult if we move to the provident fund under the new pay scale. We may have to sell our homes to repay the loans,” he said.
Hossain said people who had worked for over 10-15 years at the state banks would be in trouble after the new pay scale comes into effect.
“Newly recruited staff will benefit from the pay scale,” he added.
Rupali Bank Collective Bargaining Association (CBA) President Mushtak Ahmed told the Dhaka Tribune the separate pay scale of four state-owned commercial banks and Bangladesh Bank had been finalised without informing the employees. “We would not be able to bring enough money home to maintain our living standards as there are provisions of giving income tax and no bonus,” he further said.
The CBA Leader said a joint statement would be issued regarding the new pay scale after consulting with the CBA leaders of Sonali, Janata, Agrani and Bangladesh Bank.
Banking division Secretary Dr Aslam Alam, however, said most of the old facilities would be included in the new pay scale.
Bangladesh Bank’s CBA Secretary Manjurul Haque told the Dhaka Tribune they did not find the banking division’s separate pay scale recommendations acceptable.
“We had protested against the move of curtailing health allowance during Ershad’s regime in 1989. But now we hear that recommendations include curtailing of health allowance,” he said.
He also said the government did not accept central bank’s recommendations regarding the separate pay scale.
Currently, nearly 90,000 employees are employed in all the state-owned commercial banks, while Bangladesh Bank has about 6,000 employees, a banking division official said.
