The government has increased the salary of government employees by 10 percent. What has disappointed a large number of people is that the pension of retired government servants has also been increased by only 10 percent. Increasing salaries and pensions by the same percentage is not fair keeping in view much lower amount of pension, discontinuation of some perquisites after retirement and much more financial commitments of pensioners. The meagre pension is not enough for pensioners to meet the education expenses of their grown up children studying in higher education institutions. They also have to bear their medical expenses since they are no longer entitled to free medical treatment.
During the 1990s, some wise and sympathetic financial experts proposed a realistic increase in salaries and pensions: 10 percent for people in service, 15 percent for people who retired after 1990 and 20 percent for those people who retired before 1990. This was repeated twice or thrice and then forgotten. Had the present government followed the same pattern, it would have helped alleviate the sufferings of a majority of pensioners.
M Akram Niazi
Rawalpindi
*****
The government has announced only 10 percent increase in the pensions of retired government employees whereas pensioners were demanding the minimum 20 percent increase. This increment is meagre keeping in view the rapid increase in the cost of living and price hike of essential articles every day. The proposed increase of just 10 percent is quite disappointing. It is not understandable why the federal government increased the salary of current government employees and the pension of retired employees by the same percentage.
Poor retired government servants rely only on their pensions whereas the serving government employees get many allowances like conveyance allowance, house rent allowance and other facilities including annual increments. Ideally, the pension of retired government employees should have been increased by 20 percent.
Muhammad Murtaza Zeeshan
Lahore
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