Remuneration disparity: Govt employees want uniform salary scales

Workers of some departments frustrated over low salaries.


Peer Muhammad June 02, 2011

ISLAMABAD:


Employees of some government departments and ministries are frustrated by what they call discriminatory policy of the state towards them.


They alleged that the employees of some powerful departments such as Supreme Court, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), the army, prime minister’s secretariat, National Assembly (NA) and Senate are receiving double the salaries they are getting.

They said they wanted a uniform pay and privilege mechanism for all government employees in the upcoming budget.

“This discriminatory policy causes frustration amongst low paid employees, and promotes corruption and the use of unfair means to transfer oneself to these ‘rewarding’ departments,” said Chaudhry Mukhtar, an employee of the secretariat group and member of the Federal Secretariat Employees Association. He said most secretariat offices remain open till late night, but the workers are not given remuneration for their extra work.

Another employee of the secretariat group, Mian Manzoor, said they work for the “same government” and are subjected to the “same inflationary conditions” as others but receive a different treatment as far as the salaries are concerned.

“What additional contribution merits the [double salaries of] employees of the CBR, Supreme Court and NA? Is it because they are working in powerful departments?” he said, adding that the overtime allowance of the ‘previliged’ employees equals the entire salary of a secretariat employee.

Manzoor said that the government should put an end to this discrimination and increase their salaries, bringing them at par with the other employees. “Otherwise,” he said, “the situation would aggravate as we can not even afford to pay our children’s school fee.”

Earlier, the government had doubled the salaries of people working in the Supreme Court, CBR and some other departments, creating a huge gulf between the salaries of employees of different departments. Also, employees of some departments are getting overtime allowances while others are not entitled to this incentive.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2nd, 2011.

COMMENTS

Replying to X

Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.

For more information, please see our Comments FAQ