The Punjab government has approved a 30 percent increase in the salaries of government employees in its budget for the fiscal year 2022-23.
The decision was made during a Punjab cabinet meeting on Monday, chaired by Chief Minister Punjab, Hamza Shehbaz Sharif.
The meeting also decided to follow the example of the federal government to merge all ad-hoc relief.
Similarly, the government has also okayed a 15 percent disparity allowance along with a 15 percent additional salary for employees of certain government departments.
The Punjab cabinet also approved a 15 percent hike in pensions against the proposed increase of five percent.
The meeting also approved the MoU for providing free medicines to cancer patients.
On the other hand, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government has also proposed a 15 percent increase in the salaries and pension of all the government employees and a 15 percent ad-hoc relief allowance increase in the relief allowance for grade 1-19 employees besides DRA allowance.
Addressing the budget session on Monday, KP Finance Minister Taimur Saleem Khan Jhagra said that they were not abolishing the pension program for the government employees.
Jhagra said that the risk allowance of police officials from grades 7-16 has been increased and was brought at par with DRA in line with the police martyrs package.
He also announced transport monetization and vehicle leasing policy, change of executive allowance to performance allowance, work from home on Fridays, and introduction of fleet cards to save fuel and reduce the risk of pilferage across all departments.
The minister said that a 100 percent increase in pension expenditure has been witnessed in the last couple of years, adding expenditure on pensions, which was only one percent or Rs. 0.87 billion of total KP budget expenditure in 2003-04 jumped to 14.7 percent to Rs. 90 billion in 2021-22.
