Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry announced on Tuesday that the cabinet had approved a 15% increase in basic pay of army personnel across all ranks.

He said the increase would "bring it at par with the pay of employees of the federal secretariat.”

This special allowance brings the total raise for armed forces to 25pc following the 10% raise of the basic pay already approved in the budget last month.

As reported by Dawn on Wednesday, the Finance Division had presented a summary to the federal cabinet stating that the chairperson of the Pay and Pension Commission had made recommendations for "interim relief" for the armed forces in order to "keep their morale high".

"It is, therefore proposed, that a Special Allowance 2021 @15% of the running basic pay may be allowed to all ranks of the armed forced with effect from 01.07.2021. The total impact would be Rs38 billion per annum," that recommendation says.

During his press conference, Chaudhry said the military forces had no had a pay raise in their salary for the last two years. He also said the Rangers and Frontier Corps would not receive special allowances in this but the prime minister wanted to include them as well. Relevant officials would soon meet to discuss this, Chaudhry said.