Fresh And New Pay Scales For Govt Employees – Pay Structure Committee To Finalize By Next Month

Fresh and New Pay Scales for public servants – Pay Structure Committee to finalize by next month

Islamabad (Daily TheNews / Wednesday, September 12, 2012) – Federal Government of Pakistan has assigned the Pay Structure Committee to finalise fresh pay scales by merging existing ad hoc allowances for public sector employees at the federal level by next month, said a senior member of the committee.
The high-powered committee led by former Governor State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Dr Ishrat Hussain has recommended attaching the condition for merging allowances that the pension bill should be frozen at the existing level of ad hoc relief allowances.
“There is a major stumbling block in the way of new pay scales that will pave the way for the increasing burden of the pension bill so the committee wants to kill two birds with one stone. It wants to ensure new pay scales by removing existing distortions,” a senior member of the committee said. “We want to put in place a mechanism through fresh pay scales where there will be no loss borne by public sector employees,” said the member of the committee. A heated debate occurred during the Pay Structure Committee meeting held on Monday at the Finance Division. The meeting continued for several hours in which the committee sought details from concerned ministries and departments where distortions were created in the name of special allowances in the pay structure.
The committee is all set to recommend abolition of the discriminatory system existing within the bureaucracy of the country. “The members of the committee have also questioned how the government would implement recommendations on removing existing anomalies in pay structure when a detailed report on civil service reforms was pending in files,” said the official.
The official said the committee would meet in the next few weeks again after getting assurances from the top leadership about the fate of its earlier recommendations and after reviewing the existing distortions. There are huge distortions in the existing pay structure as was revealed during the Public Accounts Committee. It was learnt that a Supreme Court driver was getting a monthly salary of Rs50,000, a driver for the State Bank of Pakistan was getting a monthly salary of Rs90,000 while the drivers in all other ministries were getting monthly salaries of Rs10,000 each.
Further, employees of the Presidency, Prime Minister’s Secretariat, Ministry of Finance, Federal Board of Revenue, Supreme Court, National Accountability Bureau and military personnel enjoy double salaries under the head of special allowances. The government constituted this committee, comprising six private sector members as well as federal secretaries from the Establishment Division and Finance Division and a few others. The task before the committee was to remove distortions in the pay structure of the Pakistan Army, judiciary and other institutions within the government.

(Published in Daily TheNews Lahore on 12-09-2012)