The salaries and allowances of officers and employees engaged in the completed and ongoing development projects can be paid from block allocation of 2020-21 fiscal year budget, a finance division circular said.
The government made the decision as some fund disbursement for development projects, based on priority, are suspended due to austerity measures taken for Covid-19 pandemic.
The Finance division under the ministry of finance issued the circular on Thursday regarding payment of salaries and allowance of projects signed by senior assistant secretary Liza Khwaja.
Block allocation is largely set aside in the budget for special needs or emergency use. And the cost of the project staff is a regular expense.
However, experts said if the bulk of the allocation money is spent on salaries and allowances, other sectors may be deprived during natural disasters like earthquakes, cyclones, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes.
The circular of finance division said the salaries and allowance of staff and officials of the ongoing projects from April to June 2020 may be paid from the allotment from the ministry of public administration.
However, finance division has agreed that only those posts for which the Standing Committee has recommended can be exempted from paying salaries and allowances.
Moreover, salaries and allowance to be paid according to the recommendation of concerned authority with examining those matters on a case to case basis.
Officials of the finance division said the payment of salaries block allocation has been recommended from the public administration ministry.
Asked if it would be a deviation from the rules, he said there should be no problem.
Additionally, finance division has also given consent for appointment of staff and officials the projects, officials also said.
Planning Minister MA Mannan said due to special circumstances, it has been proposed to spend the allocation money on salaries and allowances of project officers and employees.
Earlier, the government decided not to disburse funds of 460 projects as part of the austerity measures due to the spread of coronavirus pandemic.
After receiving this list, it was decided to suspend 40 percent disbursement from the government funding for the implementation of less important projects. It has 460 projects. Besides, it was decided to suspend 30 percent disbursement on more important projects and suspend of 30 percent disbursement on medium important projects.
As a result, about 40,000 crore taka is expected to be saved at this time. Of these, 26,000 crore taka will be saved from 460 low priority projects.
The current fiscal year has a lump sum allocation of 5 crore taka for MPs. This money is mainly used by the MPs for the development of infrastructure and construction of roads in their respective areas.
Besides, 10,000 crore taka has been allocated in the health sector to deal with the coronavirus situation.
Apart from this, the Annual Development Program for 2020-21 fiscal witnessed a record 5,898.17 crore taka block allocation.
The block allocation is also 2.87 per cent of the overall ADP allocation.
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