Revised pension scheme for govt servants gets PM’s nod

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has approved a revised pension scheme for the retired public servants, said officials.

The PM gave her nod to the scheme forwarded by the Ministry of Finance (MoF) on November 19. When implemented, the retired public servants would be able to withdraw half of their gross pension money at one go immediately after retirement and the remaining half would be retained and paid on monthly basis with annual increment.

Currently, the retired employees have the option for drawing up to 100 per cent of their gross pension money at a time, which was so far availed by around one-fifth of the retired government officials, said the official revealing the MoF statistics.

According to the MoF, the government spent Tk 100b as pension and gratuity payments to public servants in fiscal year 2015-16 (FY'16) which was Tk 71.91b in FY'15, Tk 57b in FY'14 and Tk 59.5b in FY'13.

While the number of public servants, who took 100pc pension payment immediately after retirement in 2015, was 4,106, which was 13pc of the total retirees, in 2014 it was 4,013, accounting for 17pc of the total retirees. In 2013, the number was 5,695 representing 22pc of the total retirees and in 2012, it was 7,289, some 18pc of the total retired government employees.

Under the scheme, the annual increment on the monthly pension payments would be executed in varying ratios for employees belonging to different grades.

For employees, placed from grades 9th to 20th, the annual increment would be 6pc, for employees between 3rd and 8th-graders 5.5pc and for those above 3rd grade, it would be 5pc.