FWSC shouldn’t have been established, CEO concedes

Chief Executive Officer of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC), George Smith-Graham, has opined that government should not have established the Commission but should have rather worked at correcting defects with the Prices and Incomes Board.

“If even there were difficulties, we could easily have just gone ahead and probably found a way of resolving every difficulty there are and moved on,’ he said of the moribund Board.

Mr Smith-Graham was speaking exclusively on TV3’s Hot Issues on Saturday, February 15, 2014 when he made the suggestion.

He condemned the attitude of some governments in evading challenges by creating new systems with the pretext of sealing old challenges.

He said the Board would have gained grounds by now if the Commission had not been established.

He pointed out that since 1992, the Prices and Incomes Board has been dormant.

“They have not done anything since 1992, but their staff are there,” he observed.

He noted that several efforts were made by the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission - immediately it was established - to absorb some of the manpower of the Board.

“Those who had the technical skills to fit into our system, we were able to absorb them.”

He said after establishing the Commission, there has not been any legal amendment regarding the role of the Board, so workers are still “in the books”.

“It may have been proper if we had looked at them and reviewed their law and made changes and by now they would have stabilized instead of establishing a new one that is now going through [the building blocks],” Mr Smith-Graham stated.

He, however, recommended that since the Commission has already been established, “we will need to move on and ensure that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.”

The FWSC was established nearly seven years ago with the mandate of ensuring fair, transparent and systematic implementation of the Government of Ghana Public Service Pay Policy.