A retiree dreams to pass his leisure time listening to music of his choice sitting in his living room or to the rustling sounds of a of summer wind sitting in a garden. Taking a tea or a coffee is the most pleasant break he enjoys to crack the monotony of life. He devotes the morning reading a whole newspaper from A to Z, skipping not even a classified advertisement in small fonts that is of no significance to his needs, and passes the evening strolling in a park and chit-chatting with fellow retirees. He enjoys spending his time rediscovering the meaning and wonders of life. Everyday, he makes a humble entreaty to his creator for a reward in afterlife. He sleeps as he wishes anytime at day and night. His last wish is to avoid burdening his family and to breathe his last peacefully.
A man eagerly awaits the day he is going to retire, a day that should herald for him a tranquil life when he does not rush after the bus or any other mode of public transport. He has no rush to finish an official project within a timeframe. No more he undergoes the tension in his workplace. His life now is supposed to be a timeless beauty.
But most of the senior citizens in Bangladesh can not afford to dream to lead a hassle-free life. Senior citizens, especially the retired public servants, continue to suffer in their efforts to maintain a standard of life they are used to as their monthly income on account of pension can not keep pace with the ever-increasing rise in the prices of daily necessities. These retired people, unless they have other resources like rental income from houses of their own or from any other income-generating activities, are extremely helpless compared to anyone having the leverage to increase his income according to the behaviour of the market.
The plight of Bangladeshi pensioners has been a thing of concern for many years. But their sad stories are not much heard in the media or in any public fora. These pensioners are not unionised. Constitutionally, they have their rights. But nobody cares about their plights. They don't have any powerful association which can effectively bargain with the government on their behalf. They have but to keep mum about their distresses. Retirement, which had to be embraced with joy, has rather become a cause of their sorrow, frustration, panic and agony, replete with tales of deprivations.
The government of course takes measures from time to time to ameliorate their sufferings. But those measures are always too insufficient. When the government implements periodical recommendations of national pay commissions to increase the pays and perks of all the public servants, benefits for retired public servants are hardly taken into cognisance.
The latest National Pay Commission has submitted its report to the government proposing 100 per cent increase in pay and manifold increases in perks of the public and the military personnel that are going to be implemented from July, this year.
Minimum basic salary of a government employee would be Tk 8,200 and the maximum Tk 80,000. With allowances and perks added, the maximum take-home benefits would be of around Taka 100,000. There are many other recommendations like providing apartments and lands to be owned by public servants individually or cooperatively on hire-purchase basis at heavily discounted prices.
Such an increase in pay and perks of public servants has been overdue if one considers the growth of GDP (gross domestic product), attractive pay structures in the private sectors and most importantly, the cumulative inflation that has risen by almost 100 per cent in the last decade.
Significant increase in pay will check corruption among younger public servants, if not among the older ones who got habituated in having their palms greased for a long time. The most beneficial impact of the pay rise would be the prospect of attracting meritorious job-seekers in order to improve the quality of government service that has abominably deteriorated. A beauty in the pay commission's proposition is its consideration of parents as members of the family of a public servant while calculating his expenditures.
The day the pay commission had proposed the pay hike, the vendors in the kitchen markets and the rickshaw-pullers on the streets, started asking for a hike in the prices of their products and services. Prices of daily necessities will undoubtedly go up and there would be a huge impact on inflation in the economy from the day of implementation of the pay commission recommendations.
Stakeholders who can leverage the prices of their products and services would, however, balance their books of income and expenditure. But, the real sufferers would be those who would find their products and services having lower demands in the market and whose fixed monthly income can in no way be increased. Senior citizens and retirees, especially the public pensioners, would be the worst sufferers in this regard unless the government pays heeds to their pains.
The Pay Commission has recommended making the rate of pension 90 per cent instead of existing 80 per cent of basic salaries. It also suggested that the facilities for pensioners be increased at the rate of the salary hike of the government employees. But it is not clear what the commission meant by the phrase "the facilities".
There are two types of public pensioners in our country. One type is of those who opt for monthly pension direct from the government's coffer. The other type, the majority, is of those retired employees who opt for taking the whole gamut of the pension benefits and gratuities in one go at the time of retirement and invest the full or part of the take in "Pensioners' Sanchaypatra" -- savings certificates under a special government scheme meant only for retired government employees.
It has been observed that whatever benefits, though always very minimum, are given by the government to the pensioners on the recommendations of pay commissions usually go to the benefit of those who take the monthly pensions and the pensioners who invested their retirement funds in government-issued pension savings schemes are unfortunately ignored. One should remember, it is mostly those pensioners who having no extra-incomes or savings during their long career (as many of those had led an honest life) feel compelled to cash their retirement benefits all at a time to cater to some emergency needs and invest a part of the encashment in Pensioners' Sanchaypatra.
A few weeks back President Abdul Hamid declared the country's people aged 60 years or above as senior citizens in a noble gesture to honour their contributions to the nation. The government also approved the National Policy on Older Persons back in 2013. The United Nations Policy also recognises those who are 60 or above as elderly people. In many countries, including neighbouring India, senior citizens are given a plethora of facilities. They are legally allowed to enjoy discounts and privileges on account of many public services like in transportation.
It would be a great service to the senior citizens in our country if the pensioners of both types are given a raise in their income by increasing their monthly pensions and also by enhancing the rate of interest/dividend of Pensioners' Sanchaypatra at the same rate of the increase of pay of the active public servants.
Besides, pensioners who were not lucky to get a plot of land from the government should also be allowed to try their luck once again, as a preferential group of applicants, in the next lottery for at least an apartment, if not a plot of land, that the pay commission has suggested the government to make available for the public servants.
The latest Pay Commission deserves our heartiest thanks for considering parents as members of the family of public servants while calculating expenditure of a single family unit as one of many factors for pay-raise. But unfortunately, there are many parents who are not at all cared for by their wards who are public servants. Mostly senior citizens, these unlucky parents eke out their living on their own or on the mercy of people who are not their kids. They are not visited by their children, let alone being taken care of. May the government find a mechanism to deduct the salary of public servants to the portion meant for taking care of their parents and award those uncared parents by adding the deducted amount to their pensions or depositing the same with their bank accounts?
Having put all his or her life into active service for more than 35 years in a government organisation or a state-owned enterprise or a private body, an employee should retire with a sense of relief. He is supposed to look forward to living a hassle-free life, of course if he is fortunate enough to have a reasonable monthly income and find his children not excessively dependent on his earnings. He is lucky indeed if he finds his kids and wards well employed and happily married before his retirement. The government should side with the unlucky ones. We hope, the government would this time take one more laudatory step to increase the take-home benefits of all types of pensioners at the same rate and in the same spirit the pay and perks of the active public servants are going to be enhanced on the basis of the recommendations of the pay commission.
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