Public workers should expect Single Spine pay cheques in July

Accra, Dec. 30, GNA - Ghanaian public service workers will feel the impact of the Single Spine Payment Policy (SSPP) in July 2010, when their dream of better remuneration reflects on their pay cheques. The new pay policy being implemented in a five -year period, effective January 2010 to December 2015, is meant to restore equity and transparency in public pay administration consistent with Article 24 (1) of the 1992 Constitution and the Labour Act.

The SSPP is a unified salary structure that places all public sector employees with incremental pay points that include 25-grade structures, from the lowest to the highest organisation.

The first six months of the implementation process, will be used to address some persistent technical problems to ensure that the SSPP does not re-introduce inequities, which it was designed to address. Officials of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) made this known at the First Editors' Forum, the body organised on the SSPP and the Road Map to the Phase One of the policy, in Accra on Tuesday in collaboration with STRATCOM, a communication and media consultancy firm. Mr George Smith-Graham, Chief Executive Officer of the Commission who led the facilitators at the forum said the policy implementation would be firmly rooted when the Tripartite Committee including organised labour, comes out with the 2010 minimum wage to determine the base pay for the policy.

The editors were exposed to issues such as Pay Administration, Pay Comparison, Job Analysis and Evaluation, Single Spine Salary Structure and Allowances and Monetisation.

Mr Smith-Graham said public workers would receive a back pay to make up for January and June salary arrears.

He said the FWSC would put up a first class research centre to facilitate the implementation of the SSPP especially prompting government on labour issues.

Government published a White Paper on the SSPP in November to give official nod to the policy.

Successive governments from the 1960s instituted actions to reform the Public Service, beginning with the Mills Odoi's Commission in 1967, but the comprehensive approach was taken between 1996- 97 when the Rawlings Administration introduced the Ghana Universal Salary Structure. In 2005 the New Patriotic Party contracted a consultant to work on the current SSPP.

Some of the challenges confronting the pay administration include cumbersome negotiations involving personnel of the FWSC and about 30 unions at different times, making the management of the wage bill extremely difficult.

The 13-page White Paper noted that the SSPP was meant to resolve pay disparities that have emerged within the public service; rising cost of the public sector wage bill' large number of public sector negotiations and linkage of pay to productivity.

The development of the policy involved extensive stakeholder consultation, building of consensus. provision of legal backing for pay administration and the establishment of the FWSC as a regulatory, oversight and implementation institution. The document said, to achieve an ideal SSPP government recognised that a review of the proposed pay policy should be undertaken to address technical issues such as service functions, job content and scheme of service.