Big hike likely

The Pay and Service Commission is going to submit its report to the government today with recommendations of a pay hike for 13 lakh civil servants.

The commission's chairman Mohammad Farashuddin, who was a former Bangladesh Bank governor, will submit the report to Finance Minister AMA Muhith at 9:00am at the latter's secretariat office.

“The main objective of the report is to improve productivity, honesty and efficiency of those who are doing government services”, Farashuddin told The Daily Star over the phone yesterday.

According to sources, this time the PSC may recommend a pay hike up to 100 percent for government employees. It may also recommend many attractive incentives in the form of non-cash benefits like accommodation facility, mandatory insurance, health cards etc.

To implement these recommendations, the total expenditure on salaries and allowances of public servants may increase by 50 percent for which Tk 28,709 crore has been allocated in the current FY budget.

A finance ministry official, wishing anonymity, said the government might hike the salary by 75 to 80 percent on an average.

The official also said the new pay scale would come into effect from July 1 next year and it would be implemented in three phases as was the case with the earlier Pay Commission.

A member of the commission, who too requested anonymity, told The Daily Star that the proposed pay hikes were higher compared to the previous commission due to three causes: first, to widen the scope of a family's size, secondly, to give more incentives to poorly paid government staff, and thirdly, to give them a share of the country's economic development.

For the first time, the commission has incorporated a public servant's parents into the fold of his family while calculating family expenditures. Currently, a family means only four members excluding parents.

The 17-member Eighth Pay and Service Commission was formed in November last year.

In August 2008, the then military-backed caretaker government had formed the 13-member Seventh Pay Commission headed by former secretary M Mustafizur Rahman.

The Seventh Pay Commission took 14 months to submit its recommendations which the subsequent Awami League-led government implemented since July 2009.