Disparity angers low paid employees

The new pay structure set to be introduced for the government servants from July 1 has angered the low paid employees, who find it ‘highly discriminatory’.
Several low paid employees said that the enhanced pays for them would be insufficient to make two ends meet.
They said that the new salary structure would virtually provide no benefits to the Class III and Class IV employees who had served government for 20 years and more.
They said that the employees in this category now drawing the basic salary of Tk8,000 and their gross take home salary will increase nominally.
They said that there was staggering difference between the new basic salary of Tk 8,250 and the highest of Tk 90,000.
‘I am already in the selection grade after crossing three timescales after serving the government for 19 years as a Class IV employee since 1996,’ said a water resources ministry staff.
He said that having joined the service in Grade-20 he was already in Grade-17 drawing the basic salary of Tk7,600 and the gross pay of 14,000 which would increase nominally on implementation of the new pay structure.
He said with virtually unchanged take home gross pay it would be hard for him to support a family of four including the educational expenses of two children after deduction of 60per cent of his basic pay for accommodation.
Another Class IV employee said he gets the monthly education allowance of Tk 150 for a school going daughter in Class VII.
But a joint secretary or higher level officer gets Tk 35,000 each month to maintain a car, he said.
The discriminations prompted the low paid government employees to begin countrywide agitations from the first week of July to press a five-point charter of demands including retention of timescales and selection grades and the minimum basic pay of Tk18,000 needed to support a family of six.
They also demanded minimization of the gap between the highest and the lowest salaries by reducing the pay slabs to 10 from 20.
The Bangladesh Government Employees Coordination Council, a platform of Class III and Class IV employees, rejected the new salary structure setting the highest pay at Tk 90,000 and the lowest at Tk 8,250, as recommended by a committee headed by the cabinet secretary.
The new pay structure envisaging an average pay hike of 60 per cent would reduce the disparities and no employee would be affected, cabinet secretary Muhammad Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan told New Age.
In ratio, the difference between the lowest and the highest pay would be 1:9, he said.
In India, he said, the ratio is 1:12.
He said that the abolition of the timescales and the selection grades was recommended by the National Pay and Service Commission led by Farash Uddin Ahmed.
Musharraf said that the new pay structure would be implemented following the cabinet’s nod.
The low paid employees demanded the prime minister’s intervention to minimize the pay disparities.
The low paid employees would hold demonstrations in government offices across the country from the first week of June unless their demands were met by June 1, said Bangladesh Government Employees Coordination Council secretary general Nomanuzzaman Al Azad.
He said that the new pay structure disappointed 12 lakh government employees.