By Kofi Ahovi
Personnel of the Immigration, Fire and Prisons Service are next in line to enjoy the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) after the Ghana Police Service who saw about 200% hikes in their June salaries.
This follows the completion of their migration onto the new salary structure last week. However, there could be slight delay in the payment of August salaries due to the completion date of their migration, a source at the commission told Business Week.
According to the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission, workers of the three institutions, the final batch of the security services to be captured under the SSSS pay policy should be paid the new salaries at the end of this month.
Though military personnel are not captured under single spine their civilian colleagues with the Ministry of Defense will benefit. It is expected that the next professionals to benefit from the pay structure would be teachers due to the numbers.
The single spine salary structure promises enhanced salaries for government workers based on their value and contribution. About 70% of workers on government payroll are expected to see an increase in their salaries.
The single spine salary structure seeks to promote fairness and equity in public sector pay and salary by places all public sector employees on one vertical structure with incremental pay points from the lowest to the highest level.
The structure ensured that jobs within the same job value range were paid within the same pay range, adding that placement of the SSSS would be done on the basis of the grade structure constructed from the job evaluation exercise. It is said that the new pay policy has a 25-level unified salary structure for the public service, as well as classification of public service jobs.
With the implementation of the new pay structure, the Government of Ghana will pay a total of GH¢4.44 billion to public service workers this year alone increasing its wage bill for 2010 to 42.8% higher than the actual figure budgeted for in 2010, which is GH¢3.11 billion. This would also increase government’s overall budget deficit from GH¢1.945 billion to about GH¢3.3 billion.
This would increase the budget deficit from the original projection of 7.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 12.8% of GDP if all other revenues and expenditures remain on target.
The basic salary for the implementation of this SSSS is pegged at GH¢3.42 per a day. The relativity, which deals with the salary difference between a senior level staff and a junior a level staff, will be 1.7% for this year. It will then increase to 1.8% in 2011 and 2% in 2012.
The commission has identified some overlaps in the salary structure and the one way of de-complexion the overlaps is the use of the relativity. However, by 2012 the commission would have removed all the overlaps in the SSSS.
The total government workforce is about 521,000 and these are the people the commission is dealing with. Out of this figure the Police service is about 24,000 while the largest segment of workforce are teachers’ who number close to 25,000.
He said that the teachers are currently doing their mapping and as soon as they complete this, the commission will link them up to the structure. The mapping is to identify individuals and place them on the structure.
The highest level in the new public sector salary structure is GH¢26,806.29 annually while the lowest level is GH¢1,108.08 annually. This new salary structure toke effect from the end June this year while arrears are back dated from January 2010.
The new SSSS replaces the Universal Salary Structure (USS) and several other parallel public sector pay structures and takes into consideration the job evaluation standards of all public workers unlike the USS, which did not consider job evaluation. With the implementation of the SSSS, all other public sector salary structures are being abolished.
Personnel of the Immigration, Fire and Prisons Service are next in line to enjoy the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) after the Ghana Police Service who saw about 200% hikes in their June salaries.
This follows the completion of their migration onto the new salary structure last week. However, there could be slight delay in the payment of August salaries due to the completion date of their migration, a source at the commission told Business Week.
According to the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission, workers of the three institutions, the final batch of the security services to be captured under the SSSS pay policy should be paid the new salaries at the end of this month.
Though military personnel are not captured under single spine their civilian colleagues with the Ministry of Defense will benefit. It is expected that the next professionals to benefit from the pay structure would be teachers due to the numbers.
The single spine salary structure promises enhanced salaries for government workers based on their value and contribution. About 70% of workers on government payroll are expected to see an increase in their salaries.
The single spine salary structure seeks to promote fairness and equity in public sector pay and salary by places all public sector employees on one vertical structure with incremental pay points from the lowest to the highest level.
The structure ensured that jobs within the same job value range were paid within the same pay range, adding that placement of the SSSS would be done on the basis of the grade structure constructed from the job evaluation exercise. It is said that the new pay policy has a 25-level unified salary structure for the public service, as well as classification of public service jobs.
With the implementation of the new pay structure, the Government of Ghana will pay a total of GH¢4.44 billion to public service workers this year alone increasing its wage bill for 2010 to 42.8% higher than the actual figure budgeted for in 2010, which is GH¢3.11 billion. This would also increase government’s overall budget deficit from GH¢1.945 billion to about GH¢3.3 billion.
This would increase the budget deficit from the original projection of 7.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 12.8% of GDP if all other revenues and expenditures remain on target.
The basic salary for the implementation of this SSSS is pegged at GH¢3.42 per a day. The relativity, which deals with the salary difference between a senior level staff and a junior a level staff, will be 1.7% for this year. It will then increase to 1.8% in 2011 and 2% in 2012.
The commission has identified some overlaps in the salary structure and the one way of de-complexion the overlaps is the use of the relativity. However, by 2012 the commission would have removed all the overlaps in the SSSS.
The total government workforce is about 521,000 and these are the people the commission is dealing with. Out of this figure the Police service is about 24,000 while the largest segment of workforce are teachers’ who number close to 25,000.
He said that the teachers are currently doing their mapping and as soon as they complete this, the commission will link them up to the structure. The mapping is to identify individuals and place them on the structure.
The highest level in the new public sector salary structure is GH¢26,806.29 annually while the lowest level is GH¢1,108.08 annually. This new salary structure toke effect from the end June this year while arrears are back dated from January 2010.
The new SSSS replaces the Universal Salary Structure (USS) and several other parallel public sector pay structures and takes into consideration the job evaluation standards of all public workers unlike the USS, which did not consider job evaluation. With the implementation of the SSSS, all other public sector salary structures are being abolished.
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