Islamabad:
The government is reflecting on creating new publications for the upper bureaucracy to increase the depth in existing salary scales.
In a recent meeting, the Civil Service Reform Committee reviewed the idea of introducing additional salary scales: BPS-23 and 24. It also discussed the proposals of Bifurcar Ministries and benefits according to the workload, the fusion of assignments and exempt tax assignments.
Committee members asked if the existing basic salary scales (BP) 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 dissolved, the salary variation would be difficult to manage, since it would require separate payment scales for different services, which was not viable and feasible.
The president of the committee asked how things were administered before the introduction of the BPS system in 1973. The additional secretary reported the meeting that before the existing BPS scheme, the payment was managed in accordance with the classes and categories ranging from class I (highly qualified) to the-IV class (not qualified).
The Secretary of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives asked about the opinion of the Payment and Pensions Commission on the existing BPS system, to which the additional secretary of Finance said that the Commission had decided to retain the existing system.
The planning secretary supported the idea of categorizing ministries and divisions according to their nature of work and workload and fixing their assignments accordingly.
The president commented that the additional salary scales of BPS-23 and 24 could only be considered for ministries and divisions that have work of a technical nature and relatively higher workload. Giving his point of view, the additional secretary of Finance said that the idea of the National Executive Service could serve the purpose.
In addition, the president emphasized that the existing approach of “unique size” was no more viable and cited a case study of the Neelum-Jhelum hydroelectric project, which incurred a great loss due to the lack of specialized human resources.
He pointed out that in the federal government, six to seven highly technical ministries and divisions, such as power and energy, required specialized human resources to improve their performance and those ministries should be encouraged to attract specialized talent.
The Joint Secretary of the Division of Economic Affairs, in his presentation, revealed that after the suggestions mentioned above in the initial sessions, more meetings of the working group were held, where he agreed to an analysis of federal benefits compared to provincial benefits, a regional comparison and sought -sought -sought on the provision of a house in retreat or improvement in compensation and benefits.
After that, he explained, questions about possible objectives and their impact were raised and, in response, the working group decided to focus on the bifurcation of the ministries and benefits according to the workload. The president added that in 2018 he had given the idea of performance bonus, which was archived by the subsequent government. He gave managers to share that report with the members of the committee.
In addition, the Committee discussed the issue of hiring adaptations for federal government employees and agreed that the system should be reviewed according to contemporary needs.
The majority of the members favored the monetization of the contracting installation. However, the additional secretary of Finance was the opinion that monetization would have an impact of approximately RS24 billion annually on the federal government.
The secretary of the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) emphasized that the monetization of the contracting installation could establish some type of compensation parity against the provinces and if the decision was made, the personnel, which otherwise were involved in the process, could be reduced significantly, which results in savings for the government.
The president expressed the opinion that the general impact of monetization could be less than RS24 billion. The Secretary of Additional Finance did not agree, arguing that the impact could be greater than RS24 billion since around 45% of the employees, who received rental assignment of the House of Representatives (which was very nominal) would also demand monetization, which could increase the financial burden of the government.
The secretary of the FPSC proposed that in the first phase, monetization can be implemented only for the employees of the Federal Secretariat or for employees whose offices were in Islamabad. The President supported the idea of starting the exercise of the Federal Secretariat.
The president concluded the meeting with comments that the respective working groups would consolidate and present the final recommendations at the next committee meeting.
