SPEED WORK ON SISNGLE SPINE PAY POLICY (PAGE 31)

THE Executive Secretary of the Civil Servants Association of Ghana, Mr James Ekow Amissah, has called on the government to speed up work on the single spine salary pay policy ahead of its implementation in January 2010.
He made the call at a day’s workshop for members of the Tema chapter of the association.
Mr Amissah said the Ghana Universal Salary Structure developed by the PriceWaterHouse Coopers in 1996 and was subsequently implemented in 1999, had witnessed several distortions, culminating in workers associations, particularly those in the health sector, embarking on industrial actions.
He attributed the failure of the universal system to the inability of its administrators to remain firm on salary negotiations of workers and appealed to stakeholders to be forthright with concerns of members.
He, however, warned that the association would oppose the single spine structure, if it did not meet the expectations of workers.
A consultant to the association, Mr Daniel Amamoo, indicated that the proposed structure lacked guidelines following the absence of a clear policy on it.
He said the general implementation of the single spine structure would not benefit members of the association, hence the need to collate data and make inputs to the government for a redefinition of the proposed package.
He, therefore, called on members to voluntarily help in the data collation as the government was still awaiting recommendations across the board before the implementation of the new scheme.
The Tema Metropolitan Secretary of the association, Mr Alfred Ofoe Agbodaba, in his welcoming address, said the growing demand for high productivity from employers, as well as increased expectations on the part of workers, had necessitated the need for an educational seminar to sensitise members to the new proposal by the government.
He said the three-month seminar was meant for all civil servants across the 10 regions of the country.
Mr Agbodaba also told the participants that the association had also developed a savings and loans scheme as part of measures adopted to relieve members of the enormous pressures and challenges facing them.
He said non-due paying members of the association would not access the funds and urged all to genuinely contribute to the growth of the fund.