Home ›› 22 Apr 2020 ›› World Biz
A policy on awarding financial benefit to government staffers engaged in treating COVID-19 patients and tackling the health crisis was finalised on Wednesday.
The people entitled to get the perks include physicians, nurses, police, members of local administrations and health workers, Finance Ministry sources said.
The Finance Division has sent a memo to this end to the Public Administration Ministry to execute the policy.
The Ministry of Finance has finalised a set of policies on how these people could be brought under the special benefits. The Bangladesh Karmachari Kallyan Board (BKKB) will execute the decision.
An Additional Secretary to the Finance Ministry, Habibur Rahman, told The Business Post that the special benefit policy meant for the public officials and staff — who are combating the COVID-19 — has been sent to the Public Administration Ministry. Now a gazette notification will be published to this end.
The Finance Division has said any member of the public officials who already got infected or died of the deadly virus, would be entitled to benefit.
The policy specifies that infected employees from 15th grade to 20th grade will receive a Tk 5 lakh in bounty and employees from 10th grade to 14th grade will receive Tk 7 lakh.
Meanwhile, employees from 1st grade to 9th grade will get a reward of Tk 10 lakh, if infected.
If any on-duty staff of 15th to 20th grade dies of coronavirus, his/her nominee would get Tk 25 lakh. A sum of Tk 37.50 lakh would go to the family members of a fallen employee belonged to 10th grade to 14th grade and Tk 50 lakh would be given to officials of 1st grade to 9th grade.
However, an employee, who was not admitted to a hospital but was in self-quarantine or was not quarantined at all, will not be entitled to this financial benefit.
The policy disallows an employee from getting the benefit, if he dies or gets infected while treating patients at any private hospital in the country.
To be entitled to these benefits, public employees or their nominees should apply to the Bangladesh Karmachari Kallyan Board. A certificate from any authorised body by the Ministry of Health should be incorporated with the application form. Other necessary papers, such as treatment chart, certificate of admission into the respective hospital and necessary expenditure bills should also be submitted.
In case of death, a death certificate should be presented to the BKKB. The benefits could only be realised upon submission of necessary documents to the authority. On top of all, documents attested by the institutions concerned will be needed as to how the said employee was involved as he or she had served a coronavirus patient.
