Gaming the system: It pays to be a ‘professional’ at OGRA

Officials get significant salary bumps for completing MBA degrees.

ISLAMABAD:

Officials at the country’s top oil and gas regulator seem to have found a novel way to pocket some extra cash: getting a ‘professional allowance’ for completing graduate degrees that then bumps up their base salary by hundreds of thousands of rupees a year.

The practise of awarding salary bumps to employees with higher educational qualifications is a standard practise in both the government and the private sector worldwide. Yet sources say that the practise at the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) seems to go far beyond the norm. This is perhaps why the acting chairman of Ogra felt that it should never have been approved in the first place.

Citing one example, sources said that one senior official was getting as much as Rs140,000 per month extra – about 40% of his base salary – simply for having completed an MBA. Executive directors at Ogra make about Rs400,000 a month, so having a professional allowance added to their salaries makes a big difference to their incomes.

The sources added that Ogra is spending about Rs60 million a year in handing out such allowances and has spent as much as Rs500 million since 2002. Senior officials at Ogra confirmed many of the numbers cited by The Express Tribune’s sources.

“To get this allowance, many Ogra officials have obtained MBA degrees from public universities and they are now getting a professional allowance collectively worth millions of rupees per month. This has now become controversial in light of the opinion of Higher Education Commission,” said one source.

Ogra Secretary Farrukh Nadeem sent a letter to the HEC, seeking their opinion on whether or not the MBA should be considered a professional degree. A copy of the letter was made available to The Express Tribune. It also asked if there was any authority that certified MBA degrees in Pakistan.

In the higher education regulator’s reply, HEC Deputy Director Qazi Abid Jamal stated that the HEC considers the MBA to be an academic degree, not a professional one and that there was no certification authority for MBAs in Pakistan.

“After receiving the HEC’s response, Farrukh Nadeem had forwarded the opinion to Ogra’s assistance executive director for human resources to process the case, but file had been dumped and no action had been taken so far,” said sources familiar with the matter.

When contacted, Nadeem said he was busy and declined to provide a comment.

The professional allowances allowed to the regulator’s senior management have begun to cause some resentment in the organisation’s staff, many of whom feel they are discriminated against.

“It is discrimination that some MBA holders, along with some technical officials, are getting a professional allowance but others are being denied the same thing,” said one source who wished to remain anonymous. “The professional allowance should be open to all officials, regardless of whether they are technical or non-technical, whether they work in the finance, technical or legal department.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19^th, 2012.