Wage discrimination has been an issue throughout the state-run companies and agencies of the country’s power sector. In recent times the Inequality has nearly doubled in comparison to the wage structures of companies and agencies. The salary for a particular grade or post in the agencies is nearly half of the salary to the same grade or post in the companies. The most recent Pay Hike in the state-run Power companies caused the discrimination to be incited.
The employees of Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) and Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board (BREB) are actually paid according to the government pay scale. But, state-run companies have their own stand alone pay scale which is also relatively a bit healthier than the government pay scale since the birth of those companies. However, the recent 75% pay hike in the company’s pay scale made the situation worse than ever before also making the agency employees distracted.
More frustrating information was found after reviewing the wage structure of PDB, REB and different state-own companies.
Meanwhile, the employees of Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB) have not got the benefits of pay hike yet. They are not likely to get the enhanced wage, bonus and other facilities indeed. An official from PGCB who is not willing to disclose his name said that, the PGCB employees were ignored in the case of pay hike and it’s a violation of government order.
The new pay structure for the state-owned power companies was got approved on 16th June. According to the new structure officers of Grade-1 (Managing Director) will get Tk 1.75 lakh which was previously Tk 1 lakh. The lowest wage for the 20th grade (for power generation and transmission companies) is 14 thousand Tk where the lowest salary for the 16th grade (for power distribution companies) is 15 thousand Tk. On the other hand, according to government pay scale, officers from Grade-1 from power agencies will get 78 thousand which is almost half to the salary of grade-1 officers from companies. Again, the lowest wage in government scale is 8.2 thousand Tk, which is almost half of the wage to the power companies.
According to this new pay structure, 20 different grades were approved for the companies of power generation and transmission sector. 16 different grades were approved for the pay structure of Power distribution companies. According to the new scale, Grade-2 officers will be paid by 1.4 lakh monthly, where the government scale allows an employee with the same grade to draw only 66 thousand Tk.
In most of the cases, the scenario is almost the same, officials and employees from state-run power companies are drawing as much as double salary to rest of the general government employees.
The officials from PDB and REB informed that the Power division operates as an emergency wing of the government. Considering the emergency fact, the employees used to claim to exacerbate their wage and allowances. To accelerate the service speed and improve the quality of the emergency services of power division, employees demanded higher salaries than the government scale. However, the wage was promoted to such a scale that now it’s almost double to the national government scale. Experts say that, employees from power division companies tend to get as much as double salary to the government employees and such a mentality should be obviated.