MPO Teachers and Staff Will Also Get the Ninth Pay Scale: Finance Ministry Aims for December Gazette

There is good news for MPO-listed teachers and staff of non-government educational institutions — they too will receive salaries under the ninth national pay scale. Professor Dr Khan Moinuddin Al Mahmud Sohel, director general of the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE), has confirmed that MPO-listed teachers and employees are coming under the new pay scale, and finance ministry sources say an effort is under way to launch the benefit through a separate gazette by December.

The government announced the ninth pay structure for government employees earlier this year. Since then, the question was whether the hundreds of thousands of MPO-listed teachers and staff of private schools, colleges and madrasas would get the same benefit. The answer has now come back positive, although the ministry has not yet given a specific date for when salaries under the new structure will begin.

The DSHE director general said there might be some delay, but teachers will certainly be paid under the new pay scale. Regular discussions are being held with the education ministry so that MPO-listed teachers and staff can receive ninth pay scale salaries quickly, and he assured them that despite procedural delays they will not be deprived of the new scale.

Multiple sources claim there is a plan to bring MPO-listed teachers and employees under the new pay structure through a separate gazette by December. Information from finance ministry and DSHE sources suggests the process has now gained momentum.

A senior finance ministry official told the media that efforts are under way to launch the benefit for MPO-listed teachers and staff within this December. If that is not possible in December, it may be implemented in January next year.

Finance ministry sources also noted that when the eighth pay scale was implemented in 2015, a separate gazette for MPO-listed teachers and employees was issued quickly. However, fully implementing the new structure for them took about six months. Some time may therefore be needed this time too, though it is expected not to take as long as the eighth pay scale did.

According to estimates, bringing 602,359 MPO-listed teachers and employees under the new pay scale will require an additional Tk 13,392 crore. Of this, Tk 12,518 crore will be spent on salaries and allowances, with the remainder needed for pensions.

MPO-listed teachers and staff have long demanded a pay structure in line with government employees. Since the ninth pay scale was announced, both expectation and uncertainty had been at work among them; the latest statements from the DSHE and the finance ministry have largely removed that uncertainty.

Under the MPO (Monthly Pay Order) system, the government pays a large portion of the basic salary of teachers and staff at non-government institutions as a grant. As a result, their pay does not rise automatically when the national pay scale changes without a separate gazette — and teachers and staff are once again looking towards that separate gazette.

Teacher organisations hope that not just the announcement, but also the gazette and the implementation roadmap, will be made clear quickly. In particular, the question of the effective date — whether MPO staff will receive the benefit, including arrears, from the same date as government employees — will be answered in the gazette itself.

All in all, whether it is December or January, it is now almost certain that more than six hundred thousand MPO-listed teachers and employees will receive the ninth pay scale. What remains is only the wait for the separate gazette, through which the new pay structure will reach every MPO-listed school, college and madrasa in the country.