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Aggrieved officers take to streets demanding pay restructuring

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Aggrieved officers’ march on way to the Prime Minister’s Office on Thursday morning to hand in a memorandum seeking removal of various disparities from the new pay structure brought traffic to a halt on the busy Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue at Farmgate for an hour as the protesters were intercepted by the police.
Traffic stood standstill on the busy street for over an hour beginning 10.00 AM.
The peaceful marchers numbering 2,000 officers included engineers, agriculturists, doctors and members of 26 BCS cadre groups.
Only two other BCS groups, the officers in the administrative and the foreign service did not join the march as they received better treatments from the new pay structure compared to the rest.
Starting at the Institution of Engineers Bangladesh they barely reached the Krishibid Institution of Bangladesh near Farmgate at 10AM and were moving towards the PMO when they were intercepted by the police.
Their core demands include making the new pay structure non discriminatory by restoring the old timescales and the selection grades which used to facilitate moving up the pay scales and the grades even if they got no promotions.
Being allowed by the police, a seven-member delegation led by steering committee member of the four groups and also president of the Bangladesh Medical Association Mahmud Hasan proceeded to the PMO to hand in their petition seeking the prime minister’s intervention in  removing the ‘disparities’ from the new pay structure affecting them.
The protesters peacefully dispersed and left the spot as  the delegation returned after handing in their petition to the PMO.
The pay structure disparities brought 26 out of 28 civil service groups to the streets and  the police ‘stopped us’ near the Farmgate police box, BCS Coordination Committee spokesperson SM Golam Kibria told New Age.
‘All of us left the place as the delegation returned after the memorandum was submitted to the PMO at around 11.30 AM,’ he said.
The protesters feel aggrieved as the new pay structure lowered their status and subjected them to discriminatory pay packages and perks, he said.
As a way out the affected officers are demanding creation of supernumerary posts, or additional posts, to provide them with promotion opportunities beyond the approved posts.
They said that this should not be a difficult task considering that the officers in the administrative cadre were enjoying this benefit getting promotions even when no sanctioned posts are available.
The aggrieved officers announced that they would go for non-stop work abstention across the country unless the inter-cadre disparities were  removed by December 30.
The common demand for the restoration of timescales and the selection grade and removal of disparities brought 80,000 officers in the four groups  under a single banner since October 2015.
Source: New Age
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