Bonus poser for 1.4 million civil servants

PUTRAJAYA: Civil servants are keeping their fingers crossed for another bonus payout in Budget 2014.

They are hoping that the Govern­ment will at least match last year’s one-and-a-half-month bonus payment, said Cuepacs president Datuk Omar Osman.

He said Cuepacs is looking forward to the Budget 2014 announcement to include “goodies” that would help ease the escalating cost of living.

“We want focus to be given to workers from the middle- and low-income levels because the increase in fuel prices and other essential items has put us in a tight situation,” Omar said when contacted.

Apart from the bonus, Cuepacs has listed several other items for the consideration of Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak as the Prime Minister prepares to table the Budget on Oct 25.

They include a review of housing and subsistence allowances as well as a standardisation to the cost-of-living adjustments, known as Cola.

Omar said civil sector employees currently receive RM300, RM250 or RM100 respectively under Cola allowances, depending on whether they are in a city, town or rural area.

However, this does not apply in Sabah and Sarawak, where civil servants do not receive Cola but are instead given a special allowance of 5% of their salary.

“We hope the Cola will be standardised to RM300 in the peninsula and raised by between 5% and 10% in Sabah and Sarawak,” Omar said.

The Government gave out RM670mil in a special RM500 bonus for each civil servant from Grades 1 to 54 in July this year, coinciding with Hari Raya.

A total of 660,000 government pensioners also received RM250 bonus each in the same announcement made by Najib, with the federal allocation totalling RM165mil.

Besides bonus, civil servants enjoyed two annual salary increments this year – the usual increment and a second increment.

The latter was an initiative under the Najib administration’s Transfor­mative Remuneration System, which was reported to have cost the Government RM1.5bil as each civil servant would enjoy a salary hike of between RM80 and RM320.

There are an estimated 1.4 million civil servants in the country.

-thestar.