Islamabad: The Pakistan government approved a pay increase for federal workers on Thursday following which the employees ended the protest in Islamabad.
Government officials convinced the federal employees to end the protest a day after the city saw the demonstration turn violent as protestors clashed with police throughout the day and officers resorted to heavy tear gas shelling to disperse the crowd. At least one police officer lost his life and dozens of employees were arrested during the protest that disrupted traffic and the work at government offices, local media reported.
Thousands of government employees were holding a rally in Islamabad to seek at least a 40 per cent pay raise, which they said the government has been delaying for long.
After successful negotiations with representatives of employees, the government announced a 25 per cent increase in the salaries of federal government employees from grade 1 to 19 which has been approved on an “ad-hoc basis”. The new changes would be added to the pay scales in the upcoming budget. The officials said it was impossible for the government to raise salaries beyond grade 19 due to the financial crunch. Under the country’s Basic Pay Scale (BPS), grade 22 is the highest rank.
The government’s negotiating team included the Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad, Defence Minister Pervez Khattak and State Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Mohammad Khan, while Rehman Bajwa, chairman of the All Government Employees Alliance, represented the government employees.
The interior minister said that Prime Minister Imran Khan was concerned about the problems faced by the government employees and had issued directives to solve them at the earliest. The pay raise has only been announced for the federal government employees, as the provincial governments were responsible to resolve their issues following the 18th Amendment, officials said. Discussing the issue of income disparities of employees in different categories, Pervez Khattak said that a new policy would be introduced under which those employees who work harder would get more benefits.
The ministers have decided to release all the arrested protestors and also apologised to the employees for the use of force by capital police, saying that “it should not have happened”.
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