Lower tier employees term it discriminatory

Expressing deep grievance at the proposed 8th payscale at a press conference yesterday, government employees said virtually it would further deprive them financially let alone increase salaries compared to benefits offered to officers.

"It will just further widen the discrimination between employees and officers," said Md Hanif Bhuiyan, convener of Bangladesh Sarkari Karmachari Jatiya Oikya Forum that organised the press conference at the capital's The Daily Star Centre.      

It is absolutely an erroneous statement disseminated in the public domain that the scale will double salaries of all public servants, he said.

"The new payscale will double the salaries of only officers while 90 percent of the class III and IV employees, who constitute 80 percent of all public servants, will have no benefit," he said.

He demanded that the government immediately reviews the scale by June 21 keeping Tk 16,000 instead of the proposed Tk 8,250 as employees' lowest basic salary.

Otherwise, they will organise a rally in the capital announcing "tougher agitation programmes" to get their demands fulfilled, said Hanif.             

The proposed scale has 23 grades including three special ones for secretaries, senior secretaries, the cabinet secretary and the principal secretary to the prime minister.

The top 13 provide the highest basic pay of Tk 90,000 and lowest Tk 16,000 for officers while the lower 10 for employees Tk 12,500 and Tk 8,250 respectively.

It clearly shows that the difference between the highest and lowest salaries for officers is Tk 74,000 while it is Tk 4,250 for employees, said Hanif.

Besides, he said, basic salaries of employees who served for two decades or longer are higher than what has been proposed in different grades for them. In the proposed scale, difference in employees' grades is Tk 250 to Tk 1,000.

As per the prime minister's announcement, the revised pay was supposed to meet expenses of a six-member family comprising the employee, the spouse, parents and two children.

But, they said, a six-member family cannot subsist on the proposed meagre salary for employees.   

The National Pay Commission recommended 16 salary tiers instead of the existing 20, implying a greater salary rise with change in grade. But the secretary-level committee which reviewed the proposal suggested retaining the 20 grades.

Leaders of employees' associations that constitute the forum also demanded a rational rise between two different grades, retention of annual increment provisions, timescale and selection grade; and end of discrimination between employees at the secretariat and those working at field level.       

The government in November 2013 formed the 8th Pay and Services Commission headed by former Bangladesh Bank governor Mohammad Farashuddin to revise the pay structures of 1.3 million employees.

Md Mojibor Rahman, the forum's member-secretary, was also present.