FIA all set to be included in special club of high salary employees

ISLAMABAD: The Interior Ministry seeks special pay raise for the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arguing that honest and competent officers don’t join the agency in the present situation.

Following the prime minister’s informal nod, the Interior Ministry has moved a summary for a special pay package for the FIA employees in line with the raise given to National Accountability Bureau (NAB) by the PTI government in March this year.

Prime Minister Imran Khan is expected to approve the summary anytime but this move will put the FIAemployees in the special club of selected employees who are being paid much higher than the vast majority of civil servants.

This special club -- which include employees of Supreme court, high courts, FBR, NAB, Pakistan Administrative Service and Provincial Management Services employees in KP, 1700 employees in Punjab mainly PAS and PMS employees -- is growing slowly and steadily on the basis of the influence of the set of employees or the department they belong to.

It, however, not only creates distortions in the uniform pay scale system by allowing selected influential segments within the bureaucracy to enjoy but also cause heartburning among majority of the civil servants, who are deprived or denied of the raise given to their select groups of colleagues.

According to the Interior Ministry’s summary for the prime minister, dated 10th December 2019, the DG FIA has informed that during his call on meeting with the prime minister on December 02, the premier directed that a summary for revision of pay package and allowances of FIA be moved to bring it at par with the enhanced pay and allowance package of the NAB, approved in March 2019.

The summary said that in March 2019, the government approved a better pay package for NAB and revised allowances as below:

i) Investigation Allowance equal to 60% of running basic pay.

ii) Utility allowance equal to 25% of running basic play.

iii) Fixed Daily allowance equal to 20 DAs (revised w.e.f 01-07-2017) per month.

iv) Hardship allowance equal to basic pay as on 30.06.2015.

v) NAB Allowance (20% for BS 1-16 and 15% for BS-17 & above of basic pay as on 30-06-2011).

vi) Exemption of 5% House Rent charges deduction.

The Interior Ministry argued that there is a huge disparity in the pay package of NAB and FIA. Therefore, it is essential to revise the current pay package of the FIA at par with NAB to boost the morale of FIA employees and attract upright and competent officers in the FIA.

The summary said that the financial impact calculated for the sanctioned strength of the FIA for the proposed increase comes to Rs1.2 billion from January to June, 2020. In order to create justification for this increase, the Interior Ministry claimed that the FIA is the prime investigation agency of the federal government, which conducts investigations in the field of economic crime, money laundering, cybercrime, combating terrorism, human and drug trafficking, terror financing and organised crimes.

It added that the pay and allowances of the FIA employees do not commensurate with the job of investigation of crimes involving millions of rupees. The package of FIA, it is said, is low as compared to other investigation departments like NAB, due to which the FIA is unable to attract honest and competent officers.