No pay raise for civil servants: junta spokesman

By Admin 22 Apr 2023

DMG Newsroom
22 April 2023, Sittwe

Junta spokesman Major-General Zaw Min Tun said the regime still can’t increase the pay for civil servants due to financial constraints.

In response to an internet rumour that civil servants would get 40,000 kyats added to their current monthly salaries, the regime said via its newspapers on Saturday that there will not be any pay rise.

“News that civil servant pay will be increased is just a rumour. Their pay scales are not changing,” director-general U Win Htike of the junta-controlled finance and planning ministry was quoted as saying.

Civil servants had raised hopes of a pay increase as they are struggling to make ends meet due to rising commodity prices.

A high school teacher from Arakan State’s Rathedaung Township said: “Frankly speaking, the salary is not enough for us as commodity prices are inflated. The situation is worse for teachers at the basic education level [compared to higher education]. Though I am a high school teacher, my salary is just 216,000 kyats, whereas primary school teachers only earn 165,000 kyats and middle school teachers only earn 198,000 kyats.”

Civil servants had enjoyed steady pay increases since 2012 under U Thein Sein quasi-civilian administration, and also under the now-ousted National League for Democracy government. But with inflation running rampant since the military coup in 2021, lower-level government employees are finding it increasingly difficult to scrape by with their modest salaries.

Meanwhile, the Myanmar regime has approved a military budget of more than 5.6 trillion kyats (around US$2.7 billion) for the 2023-24 fiscal year, which begins this month, up from some 4 trillion kyats last year. The military took the lion’s share of the budget as an overall spending bill of nearly 20 trillion kyats was approved.