Mahbubur Rahman :
From July 1 next year, those who join the government service will no longer get the usual pension benefits. Instead, they will be brought under the universal pension.
For this purpose, it is said that the concerned office of the Ministry of Finance has already started working.
The Finance Minister mentioned in the budget speech for the fiscal year 2024-25 that government employees joining on or after July 1, 2025, will also come under universal pension.
According to the existing pension policy of government employees, anyone can retire after 25 years of service. In that case, 90% of his basic salary is calculated as pension. If one’s last salary is 60,000/- then 90% of that salary i.e..54,000/- is calculated for pension. 50% of which i.e. 27000/- is given at the rate of 230/- per taka per taka 62 lakh 10,000 thousand and the remaining 27000/- for medical allowance plus 1500/- for medical allowance plus 28,500/- monthly pension is provided as.
Apart from this, 2 festival allowances equal to the original pension per year, a 20% Baisakhi allowance, option to re-determine pension if the pay scale is up. Also, now again 5% special allowance is getting with a monthly pension i.e. 28500/- plus 1350/- levied for the special allowance which means a total getting .29850/-.
As per the existing policy, no amount is deducted from the salary of any Government servant for getting a pension. All money is given from the public treasury.
On the other hand, according to the universal pension policy, government employees will need to deposit 2000 to 10000 taka per month to get the pension. The remaining equivalent amount will be paid by the concerned institution. Individuals covered by this program will not receive any lump sum at the time of retirement. They will get 68 thousand 931 to 3 lakh 44 thousand 655 rupees during retirement against monthly (if one deposit for 42 years) deposit.
In this direction, the ‘Pratyaya’ scheme of the government’s universal pension scheme has started from Monday, July 1. All the employees joining the self-governing, autonomous and state-owned organizations on or after July 1 of this year will be mandatorily covered under the assurance scheme.
LumpGrant, PRL and Provident Fund have been retained in the new scheme. On the other hand, the teachers, officials and employees who are working till June 30 of this year will get all the pension benefits as before. And the government employees who will join the service on July 1 next year will be covered under this scheme.
In this regard, Finance Minister AbulHasan Mahmud Ali has commented that the movement of university teachers demanding the cancellation of the universal pension scheme is unreasonable.
According to the explanation of the Ministry of Finance, the government has introduced the universal pension scheme to build a well-structured pension structure for people of all professions through the universal pension scheme as a large number of people in the country are outside the scope of a well-structured pension except for government, self-governing, autonomous and state-owned institutions.
According to Section 14 (2) of the Universal Pension Management Act, 2023, provision has been made for the introduction of pension schemes for all the people of the country. In line with this, the ‘Prayya’ scheme has been introduced for autonomous, autonomous and state-owned and constituent entities, among others, to bring people from all walks of life to a sustainable pension system.
According to the explanation by the Ministry of Finance, currently, the pension system of the unfunded defined benefit system is prevalent in the government pension. As a result, all pension expenses are met from budget allocations provided as per requirement.
From 1 July 2024, the Fund’s Defined Contributory System pension system will be launched, as in other countries of the world, a fixed amount of monthly deposit from salary has been kept. 10 percent of the basic salary or a maximum of 5 thousand takas, whichever is less, will be deducted from the salary of the officer or employee and the corresponding amount will be paid by the concerned organization or organization. Then both the amounts will be deposited in the corpus account of that officer-employee.
To ensure the social security of the participant in the contributory pension system, the priority is to determine the reasonable amount of the monthly pension, not one-time. Therefore, in this case, the system of satisfaction has not been kept. If TK 5,000 is deducted from the monthly salary in the Pratya scheme, if the same amount is deposited by the institution, after 30 years a pensioner will get a lifelong pension of 1,24,660 per month.
The total deposit of his own income is Tk 18 lakh and if he receives a pension for 15 years his total income will be Tk 2 crore 24 lakh 38 thousand 800 which is about 12.5 times his deposit. If the pensioner survives for 30 years after retirement, he will get a pension of about 25 times his deposit.
Under the existing system, pensioners get a pension for life. In his absence, the pensioner’s spouse (husband/wife) and disabled children get a pension for life. In the new pension system also the pensioner will get a lifetime pension.
In the absence of the pensioner, his spouse or nominee will be entitled to pension for the remaining period of 15 years from the date of commencement of pension of the pensioner. For example, a pensioner dies after receiving a pension for five years after retirement. In this case, his spouse or nominee will get a pension for another 10 years.
(The author is Ph D researcher at Rajshahi University Lecturer, Rajshahi Cantonment Public School & College. Email: [email protected])