The National Pay and Service Commission will submit the final report on the possible pay scale upgrade for government employees on December 11.
Commission Chairman Mohammad Farashuddin will submit the report, which will also include recommendations on administration reform and ways to enhance staff efficiency, officials at the Finance Division said.
The finance minister is going abroad in the middle of this month and the report would be submitted before his departure, the sources told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
The recommendations came following the instruction of Finance Minister AMA Muhith, who wanted the administration to be more like that of the US government, and non-financial benefits for the government employees.
However, when the Dhaka Tribune contacted the commission chairman about the submission date, he did not confirm it and said: “I will submit it very soon.”
If the upgrade recommendation is approved, the pay raise will be as much as 80%, with the minimum pay being Tk7,000 and the maximum pay being Tk70,000. This will be the highest since 2009, when the public servants enjoyed a 74% raise. Other allowances will also be upgraded accordingly.
The report also proposed making the house loan as much as 60 times the basic salary of a government employee.
The number of salary grades is also likely to reduce to 16 from 20 grades under the current pay scale.
Time scale and selection grade are not be considered while implementing the upgrade either, as per the recommendation.
The proposed pay structure has been prepared considering the family size of six persons instead of four, sources told the Dhaka Tribune. The education expenses for children will be taken care of by the government, which includes textbooks and school tuition fees.
The commission also recommended that the government provide insurance coverage to its employees.
In order to enhance the employee efficiency as befitting with the modern times, the commission proposed to offer salaries similar to that in the private sector when appointing secretaries and joint secretaries.
A senior official at the Finance Division told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday that if the pay commission’s recommendation of 80% raise gets approved, the Finance Division will have to allocate an additional fund of Tk18,000-20,000 crore for the 2015-16 fiscal year in order to pay salaries to the government employees.
“We have not yet estimated the expense of non-financial benefits and administration reforms,” he added.
In the current fiscal year, the government allocated Tk38,000 crore for the payment of salaries and pensions of the government staff.
The Finance Division allocated Tk3,494 crore for 20% dearness allowance in the previous fiscal year, which came into effect on July 1 last year.
Last week, after a meeting with foreign delegates, the finance minister reaffirmed that the upgraded pay scale would come into effect on July 1 next year.
Upon receiving the report, a secretary-level committee will review the proposed recommendations and place it in the cabinet meeting, the minister added.
Presently, there are more than 832,000 government employees and around 500,000 pensioners in the country.
