Govt Officers Resume Strike Over ‘Discriminatory’ Executive Allowance

Following the government’s failure to provide a 150 percent executive allowance despite a commitment by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, officers belonging to the economist and technical cadres of the Planning Commission have resumed their pen-down strike today. The officers are boycotting official meetings of the Central Development Working Party (CDWP), the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC), and the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) until the Finance Division issues a notification to end the discrimination. Protests will be carried out in front of the Prime Minister’s Office and the Finance Division on a daily basis, and officers from grades 17 to 22 from other ministries are also taking part in the protest. As a result, work in ministries has been disrupted, and meetings of the CDWP, ECNEC, and ECC have been delayed. The officers are enraged because the Finance Division has granted executive allowance to specific groups of officers in defiance of the Cabinet’s Division’s orders. Their only demand is for the executive allowance to be approved. The strike is expected to last until the executive allowance is notified for officers of all grades. Last year, the government announced a 150 percent executive allowance for officers of grade 17 and above in the 2022-23 budget, but the notification later restricted the facility to a small pool of mostly favored bureaucrats, excluding other officers from the Planning Ministry, the economists’ group, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.