March, 19 2005	Saturday	08 Safar 1426

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ISLAMABAD, March 18: The National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) on Friday asked the government to introduce a non- negotiable increased remuneration package for the transaction cost sector — judiciary, revenue, audit and accounts and police — both horizontally and vertically, it has been learnt. In a detailed presentation to the Pay and Pension Committee led by former secretary general Moeen Afzal, the NRB proposed a three-time increase in the salary and perks of federal civil servants after withdrawing their existing facilities like housing, transportation, telephone, medicines and other expenses. In NRB’s calculations, this would have zero financial impact on existing pay and pension bill to the government, the sources told Dawn. NRB chairman Danyal Aziz also presented a model of increase in salaries and monetization of their perks. Under the model, the monetized emoluments package of a serving BPS-22 officer should range between Rs127,462 to Rs145,350 per month. Currently, a BPS officer gets around Rs42,000 to Rs50,000 per month in cash besides housing, telephone, medical and other facilities.

The model proposed indexation of annual increments to changes in consumer price index (CPI) coupled with performance-based increases.

Based on existing entitlement, the monetized fixed house rent of Rs50,000 per month, telephone of Rs7,000, house orderly of Rs5,300, driver expenditure of Rs10,000, fuel bill of Rs11,700, Rs7,500 of car maintenance and monthly medical bill of Rs1600 per month have been proposed to be made part of the salary.

However, every civil servant would be given the choice whether to continue with existing pay structure or adopt the monetized system which would help them create their own assets through savings from monetized higher cash salaries.

NRB chairman Danyal Aziz told the committee that the government should introduce a defined contributory pension system (like participatory provident fund) based on individual accounts instead of current post-retirement benefits based on “pay-you-go defined benefit basis” which has resulted in accumulating liabilities to the national exchequer on account of liberalization of the pension schemes by successive governments.

He said the pay and pension committee should recommend salaries for the federal government only in accordance with their functional priorities and allow the provinces and sub-national governments to develop compensation model based on their choice of priorities and resource availability. The NRB chairman, sources said, told the committee that in reality Pakistan had witnessed the emergence of divergent actual pay scales which were highly complex and different from the 22 grades of pay represented in the formal system.