KARACHI: The Pakistan Cricket Board, which loves to remind everyone about its precarious financial health from time to time due to no international teams touring the country since 2009, has announced increments for its strong workforce of nearly 650 people.
The board announced that a committee comprising former Test captain, Zaheer Abbas, Member Governing board, Shakil Shaikh and the Director of HR department, Brig (retd) Sajid Hameed recommended a raise for employees with meagre salaries and PCB Chairman Najam Sethi approved the recommendations, which will be in effect from July 1.
These "meagre" salaries drawn by the lower grade employees is less than 50,000 rupees a month. The board said these employees had not received raise for the last three years. The committee recommended that 232 regional employees will receive an increment of around 14 percent while the average pay hike for other employees will be 10 percent.
According to the board, around 85 percent of PCB's staff (both headquarter and regional) earn less than 50,000 a month.
It also added that the case for increase in salaries of higher cadre employees will be considered in due course of time.
Interestingly the decision to give increments comes at a time when only recently the board sacked some 150 employees of all scales and in permanent and contractual positions and some of them went to the courts and got stay orders.
The reason given for sacking was that the board wanted to reduce over-staffing to cut on funds since international teams were not touring Pakistan and there was no proper bilateral series with India since 2007, which had led to a reduction in the board's revenues and earnings.
Ironically many of the employees who were sacked were hired during the tenure of ousted chairman Zaka Ashraf.
Ashraf had also brought Brig (retd) Sajid Hameed as his right hand man in the board and not only does he remain in the board but was also on the committee which recommended the pay raises yesterday.