The National Pay and Service Commission (NPSC) will submit its much-awaited report to the Finance Ministry today (Sunday), recommending a new salary structure for the government employees.
Former Bangladesh Bank (BB) governor Dr Mohammad Farashuddin, who led the 17-member Commission, will hand over the report to Finance Minister AMA Muhith at the Finance Ministry at 9 in the morning, senior public relations officer of the Finance Ministry Md Shahedur Rahman informed on Saturday. Only after six months of the December 2008 general election, the AL led government under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina implemented a significant pay hike for the government employees in July 2009 as per the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission, constituted in 2007 by the than caretaker government.
On November 24, 2013, the government constituted the 17-member commission headed by Mohammad Farashuddin to formulate a new pay structure for public servants.
The report was supposed to be submitted by December 15 this year but it could not be done as the Finance Minister was abroad at the time.
The Finance Minister earlier told reporters the new pay scale would come into effect on July 1 next fiscal year.
Insiders said the highest basic salary was likely to be around Tk 80,000, which is Tk 40,000 now, while the lowest scale might be increased to Tk 10,100 from the existing Tk 4,100 now.
Some of the existing 20 grades might be merged to make 15 grades, most likely the ones between 10 and 20, they added.
A member of the commission had reportedly been advocating the inclusion of these issues in the proposed pay commission report, but the NPSC chairman opposed the move, the sources said.
A proposal was also presented to introduce a rule for making public servants officers on special duty (OSDs) for only a six-month stint; but the recommendation was also scrapped for being politically sensitive.
At an earlier meeting of the commission, NPSC chief Farashuddin - a former Bangladesh Bank governor - admitted there was a lack of efficient officials in the government, said a commission member who was present at the meeting. The meeting also discussed a World Bank report which found that the public servants had inadequate English writing skills.
Presently, there are more than 832,000 government employees and around 500,000 pensioners in the country.