Clicky
National, Front Page

CompensatIon for Corona-InfeCted employees

Govt may face huge pressure


Published : 21 Jun 2020 10:07 PM | Updated : 07 Sep 2020 05:45 PM

With the rising trend in both death and infection among the government officials and employees, the government may go under a lot of pressure to compensate its officials and employees, finance ministry sources said. 

On April 23, the finance ministry issued a circular stating that all government officials and employees, physicians, nurses and health workers will be compensated if they are infected with or die of Covid-19 while on duty.

As the transmission cases from the Covid-19 among the government officials, employees including physicians, nurses, health workers, member of different law enforcement agencies have already crossed 10,000, the government may face difficulties in compensating the infected persons or the family members of the dead.

If the pandemic situation continues with the rising trend, the government will have to search alternative way to meet the compensation.

The government employees affected by coronavirus have started submitting applications to the finance department to get the declared compensation money.

A total of 20 applications have been submitted to the finance department till Thursday.

On the other hand, thousands other applications from police personnel which have been sent to the home ministry are waiting to be sent to the finance department.

In that case, the government will have to allocate money from other sectors to meet increasing demand.

Once the application is submitted to get declared compensation money, the government will release the money in favor of the victims after checking and sorting at least three places, including the regulatory authority, the concerned ministry and the finance department.

In this regard, the Joint Secretary of the Finance Department Shirajun Noor Chowdhury said, “Some demands have come from the Ministry of Health. After checking and sorting them, the money will be released.”

He said, “Separate allocation has been made to avert any problem in receiving the money in this regard.”

On April 7, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced the health insurance for government officials in grade.

Then on April 23, the finance ministry issued a circular announcing direct financial compensation instead of health insurance.

According to the circular, government employees will get Tk 25-50 lakh as per grade if they die due to coronavirus.

If any government employee is affected by Covid-19, they will get Tk 5-10 lakh as per the grade.

For this, a total of Tk 850 crore has been allocated.

However, the total number of government officials and employees in the country is 20 lakh. Among them, 17 lakh are working at present.

Police personnel have mostly been affected by corona among government employees.

No application has been submitted by them to the finance department yet.

A total of 8,496 members of the police were affected by coronavirus and 32 died.

The Department of Police has sent the applications of seven personnel who died of Corona and 1,300 affected to the Home Ministry a month ago. The Home Ministry has not sent applications to the finance ministry yet.

Assistant Inspector General (AIG-Media) of the Police Headquarters Md Sohel Rana said, “Applications are being made to the Home Ministry following due process.”

The same procedure will be followed for the rest.

According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), 4,253 members of the armed forces and their families have been infected with the coronavirus.

This information was revealed in a press release on Saturday.

The ISPR did not say how many of them were on service and how many were retired.

According to ISPR, 713 members of the armed forces and their families have been infected with Cavid-19 in the past week alone. It said, among them, eight people died.

All of them are retired members of the armed forces, it added.

Besides, a total of 538 members of Ansar and village defense forces have been affected and among them, three people lost their lives till last Wednesday.

In addition, corona also affected 165 fire service personnel and 50 prison staffs.

A total of 1,035 doctors across the country have been identified as Corona affected.

Besides, a total of 885 nurses and 1,354 other health workers have been infected with the corona.

Till last Friday, 38 doctors died due to coronavirus disease. Five of them died with corona symptoms.

Two nurses and one other health workers have died.

According to the Bangladesh Administrative Service Association (BASA), a total of about 200 corona cases have been reported in the administration cadre so far. Among them, three officers died.

Apart from this, hundreds of lower level officials and employees of the administration have been affected by coronavirus.

Joint Secretary of Cabinet Division Md Khalilur Rahman said they have not yet received any application for compensation.

“If they receive any application, it will be sent to the finance department after verification,” he added.