Many govt employees to miss out on pay hike

Many officers overlooked qualifier of not drawing executive allowances

PESHAWAR: With the country facing the highest inflation in five and a half years, the provincial government had planned to provide relief to its employees between grade 17 to 19 in the provincial budget 2019-20. However, it has emerged that around half of the provincial government employees of that grade are not eligible to benefit from the five per cent ad-hoc relief.

Documents of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) budget for the fiscal year 2019-20 showed that the provincial government had announced to increase by 10 per cent the salaries of government employees in basic pay scale (BPS) grade 1 to 16. Salaries of officers in BPS17-19 were to be increased by five per cent while the salaries of officers in grade 20 and above would not be increased.

However, a notification issued from the K-P Finance Department has sought to exclude all those officers from this raise who are serving on certain projects or those who receive executive allowances.

Meanwhile, provincial employees in these pay grades say that they noticed no substantial difference in their final paychecks, assuming that since the rate of income taxes has been enhanced and some of the older tax slabs reinstated, any increase in their salaries would be wiped away by the increased income tax deducted.

However, they expressed their ignorance about the caveat in the salary raise notification from the finance department.

The take-home salary of a majority of the civil servants has slightly reduced despite a rise of five per cent to 10 per cent in their salaries in the budget due to a surge in income tax liabilities. The take-home salary of the majority of officers reduced from Rs3,000 to Rs15,000 per month.

Due to an increase in inflation, caused by currency devaluation and the imposition of additional Rs734 billion in taxes, the purchasing power of a common man has significantly shrunk in the past year.

While unveiling the provincial budget in the K-P assembly, the provincial Finance Minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra had said that they were slashing salaries of cabinet members by a whopping 12 per cent, two per cent more than the cut in salaries of federal cabinet members.

Thereafter, Jhagra had unveiled the plan to raise salaries of provincial government employees, noting that senior government officers of in BPS-20 and above would forego any increase in salary along with civil servants in other positions with significant allowances.

Another cost-saving method identified by the provincial government was to increase the retirement age of government employees in the province from the current 60-years-of-age to 63-years-of-age for cumulative savings of Rs20 billion.

He dispelled misconceptions that doing so would either affect employee promotions — by realigning promotions to performance — or put a halt to new recruitments —he said that the provincial government aims to recruit some 40,000 people in the next fiscal year.

The finance minister had further contended that this measure was taken in line with international practices and with regards to the rising life expectancy in the country.

Later, the government pushed a bill through the provisional assembly to raise the retirement age of government employees.

Meanwhile, the provincial governments of K-P and Punjab – both led by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), have doled out billions of public money in executive allowances for civil servants.

The allowance had been proposed for grade 17 to 22 cadre officers. 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 7^th, 2019.