Official business can now be conducted outside office hours

The National Pay Commission has said that the amendment to the Pay Framework Standards stating official business can be conducted outside of work hours is now in effect, with the offices that wanted this change being able to abide by the regulation.

A senior official from the commission stated last Thursday to Mihaaru News that the "Public Working Time" was arranged due to some employees not being able to finish that many tasks within working hours due to the work structure of the offices themselves.

"Let's take for example, maintenance employees. They can only do their work when office employees leave the office. There are instances where maintenance workers do not do much work from 8:00am to 2:00pm, with them having to work overtime. This may not be the most efficient path to take," said the official.

Along with maintenance employees, employees who conduct various inspections and surveys, and software developers from the IT field can now abide by "Flexible Working Time", as it has been facilitated in offices, said the Pay Commission.

"We have given permission for time to be allocated to do work in a flexible manner. There are people in the office that do not necessarily have to be there at that point in time. We want to bring about results by exploring and arranging various avenues," said the Pay Commission official.

"Coming to work at the allotted time and signing out is not the way to bring about results. The culture of the working environment needs to change in order to provide a good service to citizens."

The Finance Ministry said that most employees will see a pay increase from this month onward. As per the government, there will be no employee with a base remuneration less than MVR 7,400 from this month onward. The Pay Commission has said that there are some employees who have had a base salary of MVR 3,100 until now.

Since the state's Pay Framework came into effect in 2022, the first pay raise was seen in the education sector, health sector and university employees. With the new framework, the Pay Commission has said that the pay raise and overtime regulation changes to these sectors has shown good results.