Govt lacks fund to execute 9th pay scale for bureaucrats

The government has not gathered enough funds to announce the 9th pay scale, due for the last two years, for the public employees in the ensuing fiscal year, an official of the finance ministry said.

“We wanted to offer a new pay scale to the 21 lakh of civil servants across the country but the government has failed to accumulate adequate funds due Covid-19 pandemic and the war on Ukraine,” the official said, requesting anonymity.

He also said that the government needs an additional Tk 30,000 crore to implement the bureaucrats’ payroll considering a 50 percent to more than 100 percent hike in their salaries and allowances.

In fiscal 2014-15, the budgetary allocation for bureaucrats' payroll was Tk 28,820 crore. In fiscal 2016-17, when the new pay scale was fully implemented the fund size reached Tk 49,043 crore.

The proposed budget for the ensuing fiscal year reveals that the finance ministry is able to raise only 9.55 percent in salaries in the revised budget outlay. However, the official claimed that the implementation wing of the finance division is now preparing a roadmap for execution of the 9th pay scale as inflation hits a new 18-month high of 6.22 percent in March.

If the economic situation of the government improves, the government may announce the new pay scale at the end of the next fiscal year, just before the national elections, the official pointed out.

Meanwhile, some Tk 76,412 crore has been earmarked for bureaucrats' payroll in fiscal 2022-23, up Tk 6,666 crore from this fiscal’s revised budget outlay, according to finance ministry officials.

The outlay comprises 11.27 percent of the proposed budget. In fiscal 2021-22, it was 11.55 percent of the budget.

A large outlay in every budget solicits the question: Are the service qualities of the public servants improving together with their raise?

The citizen charter provisions for every ministry and division require that the qualitative aspects of the bureaucrats be improved.

Former Finance Secretary Mahbub Ahmed told Business Insider Bangladesh there is no doubt that the services of the public servants have not improved in the last couple of years. Training is necessary for service improvement of the employees which also depends on good governance in the country.

In fiscal 2015-16, under the new pay structure, the basic salary of civil servants was hiked as much as 101 percent, and in the following year, their allowance was enhanced, too. They are also allowed to have access to low-interest loans for buying apartments, cars and wages for their drivers.