FDE’s revised honorarium formula draws flak

Islamabad : The Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) has announced revised formula for the grant of honorarium to its employees reducing the amount for non-teaching employees and excluding teachers.

According to officials, honorarium is a way of rewarding good performance and incentivizing employees. If an employee makes an extra effort to reach institution’s goals, he is rewarded with honorarium. Performance is the only satisfactory basis for an employer to justify any differences in the amount of honorarium. Fairness is central to the employees’ reward system.

Under the new formula, the upper limit for BS-1 to BS-9 employees is fixed as Rs20,000 while the employees of BS-11 to BS-17 can be granted maximum Rs25,000 depending upon their performance. The maximum amount of Rs30,000 is fixed for the head of the educational institution and Vice Principal with high achievement. Earlier, the employees were granted honorarium equal to their basic pay and those teachers who performed additional duties besides teaching were also granted honorarium.

A college accountant told 'The News' that educational institutions had their own budget of honorarium but they couldn't spend it without permission of the FDE.

"This year, the treatment of FDE with the staff of educational institutions is not fair. The FDE has imposed restrictions by fixing the upper limit of honorarium. A huge amount will be left unspent. Ultimately FDE may eat up the salvage amount of educational institutions by the end of this fiscal year. Moreover it will have devastating effects on the entire department. It will erode performance and commitment of the staff and will increase counter-productive work behaviour,” he said.

The non-teaching staff members of the educational institutions demanded that they be treated on a par with the employees of FDE.

They said the formula for the grant of honorarium should be similar for the employees of FDE and the employees of educational institutions.

A representative of the Federal Government College Teachers Association said it was certainly unfair of the FDE to decide unilaterally not to pay honorarium to the teachers who perform additional duties besides teaching.

He said to run various programmes/activities in the colleges, there lied active involvement of the teaching faculty in non-academic activities.

"It is the teachers who are in charge transport/bus service, acts as drawing and disbursing officer and in charge of the students affairs branch. They are the members of various committees who perform proctorial duties, they are members of college building maintenance and development committees, purchase committees."

He also said there were many more assignments, which were given to teachers.

"If their [teachers'] work is not properly recognized it will affect their motivation, effectiveness, and willingness for additional assignments. Unfairness creates a climate of mistrust and resentment which ultimately increases unionizing," he said.