Yesterday's cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia discussed the proposal in detail, but decided to finalise the new pay scale in its next meeting, sources said.

A cabinet source said the decision was deferred, as the finance ministry needs more time to check how much money it can arrange to meet the extra amount needed to implement a new pay scale.

According to another source, the government is deliberately foot dragging on setting a new pay structure for its employees to avoid too many changes or too much extra pressured on the current budget.

As Finance and Planning Minister Saifur Rahman is scheduled to go abroad tomorrow for 12 days, a source said, it is unlikely that any cabinet decision on a new pay scale would come before his return.

During this trip, Saifur will meet executives of The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington. The multilateral donors who earlier had expressed reservations about too high a pay hike and advised the government to keep the additional monetary requirement for implementing a new scale within Tk 4,000 crore.

Sources hinted at that Saifur probably wants to make sure of the attitude of WB and IMF in this regard, as he himself told yesterday's cabinet meeting to wait and give him more time to study further before making a final choice.

The five-member secretary-level committee headed by Cabinet Secretary Dr Sadaat Hossain yesterday proposed four alternative pay structures with the highest requiring Tk 5,213 crore additional money and the lowest Tk 3975 crore. The mid-range proposed scales will require Tk 4,541 crore and Tk 4,286 crore.

The committee in its proposal noted that in view of government employees' expectations, resource constraints and living cost, implementing the second highest proposed scale with Tk 2,500 basic pay at the lowest and Tk 24,000 at the highest end is the most logical option.

The highest proposed pay scale designates Tk 2,600 at the lowest and Tk 25,000 at the highest end.

The third highest pay scale requires Tk 4,286 crore extra money to implement with the lowest basic pay at Tk 2,450 and the highest at Tk 23,500. And the lowest pay scale proposed has the lowest basic at Tk 2,400 and the highest at Tk 23,000.

If the government chooses the pay scale recommended by the secretary-committee, it would mean a 60 percent salary hike at the highest and 70 percent at the lowest end from the existing scale. Then the ratio of the lowest and the highest salary would be 1: 9.60.

The sixth Pay Commission for state employees however had recommended 83 percent hike at the highest level and 86 percent at the lowest. If the government had gone for implementing those recommendations unchanged, it would need an additional Tk 6,712 crore in budgetary allocations.

The current budget has earmarked Tk 13,477 crore in salaries for the government staffs.

The new scale is supposed to take a retrospective effect from January this year.