Govt considers introducing new pay scales

ISLAMABAD:

The government is mulling over creating new posts for top bureaucracy to increase depth in the existing pay scales.

In a recent meeting, the committee on civil service reforms reviewed the idea of introducing additional pay scales – BPS-23 and 24. It also discussed the proposals of bifurcating ministries and benefits as per work load, merger of allowances and exempting the allowances from taxes.

Committee members asked whether the existing basic pay scales (BPS) should be retained. Responding to that, the additional secretary of the Finance Division said that the option was considered by a working group, but if the BPS was disbanded, the variation in pay would be difficult to manage as it would require separate pay scales for different services, which was not workable and feasible.

Committee chair asked how things were managed before the introduction of BPS system in 1973. The additional secretary apprised the meeting that before the existing BPS scheme, the pay was managed according to classes and categories ranging from Class-I (highly skilled) to Class-IV (unskilled).

Planning, development and special initiatives secretary asked about the opinion of the Pay and Pension Commission on the existing BPS system, to which the additional finance secretary said that the commission had decided to retain the existing system.

The planning secretary endorsed the idea of categorising ministries and divisions as per their job nature and workload and fixing their allowances accordingly.

The chair commented that the additional pay scales of BPS-23 and 24 could only be considered for the ministries and divisions having technical nature work and relatively higher workload. Giving his view, the additional finance secretary said that the idea of National Executive Service could serve the purpose.

Moreover, the chair emphasised that the existing “one-size-fits-all” approach was no more workable and quoted a case study of Neelum-Jhelum hydropower project, which incurred a huge loss due to the lack of specialised human resources.

He pointed out that in the federal government, six to seven highly technical ministries and divisions like power and energy required specialised human resources to improve their performance and those ministries should be incentivised to attract specialised talent.

Joint secretary of the Economic Affairs Division, in his presentation, revealed that after the above-mentioned suggestions in initial sessions, further meetings of the working group were held, where it agreed on an analysis of federal benefits as compared to provincial benefits, a regional comparison and sought suggestions on the provision of a house on retirement or improvement in compensation and benefits.

Following that, he explained, questions about potential targets and their impact were raised and in response the working group decided to focus on the bifurcation of ministries and benefits as per workload. The chair added that in 2018 he had given the idea of performance bonus, which was shelved by the subsequent government. He gave directives to share that report with members of the committee.

Additionally, the committee discussed the matter of hiring accommodations for federal government employees and agreed that the system should be reviewed as per contemporary needs.

Most of the members favoured the monetisation of the hiring facility. However, the additional finance secretary was of the view that monetisation would have an impact of about Rs24 billion annually on the federal government.

Secretary of the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) emphasised that the monetisation of hiring facility could establish some sort of compensation parity vis-a-vis provinces and if the decision was taken, the staff, who was otherwise engaged in the process, could be reduced significantly, resulting in savings for the government.

The chair expressed the view that the overall impact of monetisation might be less than Rs24 billion. The additional finance secretary did not agree, arguing that the impact could be greater than Rs24 billion as around 45% of employees, who were getting house rent allowance (which was very nominal) would also demand monetisation, which could increase the financial burden on the government.

The FPSC secretary proposed that in the first phase, the monetisation may be implemented only for the employees of the Federal Secretariat or for the employees whose offices were in Islamabad. The chair endorsed the idea of starting the exercise from the Federal Secretariat.

The chair concluded the meeting with remarks that the respective working groups would consolidate and present final recommendations in the next meeting of the committee.