THE PTI government had come to power with the slogan of ending discrimination in every sphere and ensuring uniformity but so far it is treading quite the opposite course, much to the disappointment of the masses.
The Interior Ministry has now reportedly prepared a summary for a special pay package for the FIA employees inline with the raise given to the National Accountability Bureau by the PTI government in March this year. This move will put the FIA employees in the special club of selected employees who are being paid much higher than the vast majority of civil servants. Nobody can deny the importance of the Federal Investigation Agency in dealing with important crimes such as smuggling, narcotics, currency offences, immigration and passports etc but this does not mean that the agency or any other organization should be given special treatment when it comes to perks and privileges of its employees as those sitting in other ministries and attached departments are also not sitting idle but doing the task entrusted to them. Every public sector department has its own significance which cannot be ignored and overlooked. Therefore, this sheer discrimination of providing some departments higher salaries than others must come to an end as it is only resulting in frustration and heart burning amongst the employees who are denied the same, thus greatly affecting their performance. In the PPP era, a 20% secretariat allowance was announced for the employees but again it was only given to a select group of departments whilst the case of those who were deprived of the same is still pending before the high court. And now another proposal is also under consideration of giving special executive allowance to senior bureaucrats, who are already highly paid. This will be an injustice to the low scale employees. Inflation and price hike affects everybody. Hence, we will suggest the government to do away with these anomalies in salaries and come up with a uniform pay scale system for all. The salary package should be such that satisfies the need of the employees. This will go a long way in improving the efficiency and performance of the public sector departments.
