Top contract officers to pocket 37% more

Packages of contractual employees has been revised for a second time in seven months

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has increased the pay package of employees serving on contractual basis at top management positions by up to 37 per cent but his government remains unable to introduce reforms in the regular civil service.

The pay packages of Management Position (MP-I), MP-II and MP-III have been increased with immediate effect, according to a notification issued by the finance ministry last week.

The government has increased the basic pay and utilities allowance by 50 per cent for all the three categories. However, it did not upward revise the house rent, which brought down overall raise in the range of 33 per cent to 37 per cent, depending upon the MP grade.



For future, the basic pay of the MP-scale employees will subsequently be revised in proportion to the revision in the basic pay of the civil servants as a result of revision of the basic pay scales, according to the notification. This has ended uncertainty, as the salaries of the MP-scale people were not revised on a regular basis in the past.

It was the second revision in the pay packages of the MP-scale officers in last seven months. In December last year, the government had increased the package by 10 per cent. Last month, the government had also announced new pay packages for the employees recruited for the execution of development projects. The pay packages of fresh, direct and existing employees of the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) projects had been significantly increased.

MP-I is equivalent to grade-22 of the civil service, which is the highest grade in the civil bureaucracy. Administratively, however, a grade-22 officer is far more powerful than an MP-I employee hired from the private sector for a fixed tenure. The MP-scale officers do not have financial powers, unlike in case of a federal secretary who is also Principle Accounting Officer of the concerned Division.

The government increased the maximum pay package of MP-I officers from Rs513,500 per month to Rs699,250. The net increase for the MP-I scale will be Rs185,750 or 36 per cent. In addition to this, the MP-I officer will keep getting Rs95,910 monthly car monetisation allowance.



The maximum salary package of the MP-II scale, which is equivalent to grade 21, has been increased from Rs312,400 to Rs413,600. The net increase in monthly package will be Rs101,200 or 33 per cent. He will be entitled to Rs77,430 car monetisation allowance in addition to his salary package.

Similarly, the maximum pay package of MP-III, which is equivalent to grade-20 officer, has been increased from Rs170,500 to Rs233,750. The net increase in monthly salary of MP-III employee is Rs63,250 or 37 per cent. He will be also entitled to Rs65,060 monthly car allowance.

The government has been facing challenges in attracting the best talent against top management positions due to relatively unattractive salary packages. After the fresh revision, the remunerations of the MP-scale people are somehow close to the salaries that the people with similar qualification are getting in the private sector. However, many people who served in the government departments for a brief period got better financial packages in the private sector on the strength of their public sector experience.

The MP-scale people often do not get equal treatment and they have to struggle hard to earn their space. The MP-I scale that had been introduced for professionals but it is now often fully exploited by bureaucrats, mainly from the District Management Group, now renamed as Pakistan Administrative Service.

The efficiency in the civil bureaucracy has gone down to an alarming level of about 13 per cent, according to a statement given by Ahsan Iqbal, Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reform, in the past.

This was mainly because of lack of proper monitoring of performances and preference of few bureaucrats over others, which was once an exception but has become a norm in the PML-N government. The ruling party has a pool of well-trusted bureaucrats, which has now started shrinking.

About two years ago, the Planning Ministry had tried to reform the civil service but it shelved the proposal of establishing a new national executive service (NES) following opposition by the all-powerful Pakistan Administrative Service. It wanted to establish the NES at grade-20 to grade-22 in order to induct talented people against posts critical in decision-making.