WITH the government announcement to fully pay bureaucrats under the new pay scale from January next and repay the arrears from July last with the salary of January and February, protest against the new pay scale has flared up again among professional groups threatening unrest in government, semi-government and autonomous services. Government college and public university teachers, engineers, physicians, central bank officials, agricultural scientists and such other groups demonstrated against the new pay scale afresh on Tuesday at Jatiya Press Club asking the government to remove the financial anomalies and restore their status lost to BCS administrative cadre service officers within December 31. Their threat that they would paralyze everything after that time to end the discrimination has been however meted out on Wednesday by Finance Minister terming their claims as ‘utter nonsense’ which many fear may contribute to further worsen the situation.
The fact is that the new pay scale has established the BCS cadre officials on top of all other professional groups in salary and status uniting them to oppose the new pay scale from the beginning. BCS education cadre moreover complained about abolition of Selection Grade and Time Scale. Public university teachers have denounced it for downgrading their status. Bangladesh Bank employees demanded restoration of their equal status with BCS cadre official at entry level as they said the down-grading of their status by one grade will fail to attract efficient and meritorious people to central banking service.
The government is helpless in depending on others and not the people and so it is trying to keep others pleased with financial and other benefits. As against the people it is not possible to keep all the vested interests happy.
In the same way the government’s new move to extend the retirement age of bureaucrats from 59 to 62 years and in case of freedom fighters from 60 to 65 appears to be another issue. The service tenure will not only block new recruitment and creation of new jobs in government services; officers in the service will equally suffer from delay in getting promotions. Thus not all the government officials can be satisfied. Moreover the government appears to be too anxious to prove special relationship with the freedom fighters forgetting how wrong the present government is in thinking they can be pleased merely by providing them with special benefits as a class no matter what is the cost to the nation.
Our advice for the government is to behave like the people’s government and pay attention to their welfare. Life is hard for most people and the people’s money should be spent prudently. The people’s money is not for purchasing political favour from special groups. The government is deceived by incompetent and corrupt ones while the poor management of economy is causing hardship for all.
Besides, the government will not find it easy to resolve the dispute over the anomalies in government pay scales.
