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Friday March 29, 2024

Pensioners lament partial increase in pension

By Mansoor Ahmad
May 30, 2017

LAHORE: Pensioners complained that they would get a 10 percent raise in pension as per the budget for the fiscal year of 2017/18, while serving government employees would get relatively higher increase in salaries because of merger of an ad-hoc relief allowance into their payroll.

The Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, in his budget speech, announced an increase of 10 percent in the salaries of government servants as well as pensioners. It was in line with the past practice of granting similar relief to both. Earlier, the salary raise, however, was as ad hoc relief allowance, which is not added to basic salary. But, now the government made the ad-hoc relief allowance of 2008-09 part of the salary and the latest increase was on the aggregate amount. 

The increase that each government employee will get is substantial as the last year’s salary raise consumed Rs67 billion of national revenue, while the budget for the next fiscal year set aside Rs127 billion on this account. If the increase had been straight 10 percent for both pensioners as well as government employees the budget allocation would have been Rs73.7 billion rather than Rs54 billion higher as a matter of fact. 

This could be a way to please the government employees ahead of general elections next year. Pensioners are old and very few of them go for voting.

Najma Ghafur, a widow who gets her husband’s pension after his death, said she has no issue with the increase in salaries announced for serving government employees. 

“They have a right to live with respect and dignity,” Ghafur said. “It is, however, not fair to ignore the retired government employees that served the people of Pakistan with more dedication and honesty than seen today.” 

She said public administration and public service delivery are deteriorating with each passing day. “This is enough proof that those who retired 10 or 20 years back were serving the country better.”

Salaries of public servants started increasing in the late eighties. Subsequently, salaries are so high now that a grade 22 government servant who retired in 1990 is getting low pension than what a grade 16 or 17 employee will get if he retires today. 

The widow said cost of living has increased equally for both the pensioners and the serving government employees. The government should at least have increased the pensions in line with the increase in salaries of government employees, she added.

Critics said some other budgetary measures also show that the influential segments of the society have been favoured. For instance, the government has continued its policy of concessional duties on hybrid and electric cars, which are used only by rich class, accounting for one percent of population and who holds tons of money and needs no subsidy. An objective behind this concession is to reduce the use of imported fossil fuel. Indeed, the amount of foreign exchange spent on used car imports is huge. The government, albeit, has removed an anomaly by granting the same concessions to the domestic manufacturers of hybrid cars.

Minister Dar, in his first budget speech of 2013, announced that all tax exemptions and statutory regulatory orders would be withdrawn during the tenure of this government. Ironically, tax exemptions of more than Rs455 billion are still in vogue in the budget for 2017/18. These concessions are meant for influential segments of the society.