Accra Jan 6, GNA - President John Dramani Mahama has pledged to carry out a review of the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) and Pensions, as part of government’s efforts to address concerns of public sector workers.
The President made the promise in
his address at the opening of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT)
54th National Delegate Congress and Seventh Quadrennial Conference in Accra, on
the theme “Education and Development: The Ghana Education Service (GES) at 50:
Reflecting, Reviewing, Revising, and Growing the Profession and the
Unions”.
The SSSS is a public sector pay system, aiming to standardize wages for fairness and transparency by grouping jobs onto unified salary scales.
It was introduced by the Kufuor
Administration, however, negotiation was not complete, when Professor John
Evans Atta Mills won the 2008 election with Mr Mahama as his Vice President.
President Mahama said the Kufuor
administration prior to leaving office threw a lump sum increment and dumped a
single spine on Ghanaians.
He said however, organised
labour, led by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) decided that they were not going
to accept it and that they would negotiate with the new government.
“And so it took quite a while for
the negotiations to take place. But eventually, we managed to get a spine that
was working. It was not exactly straight, a bit crooked, but at least everybody
got something,” he said.
“And so we started paying the arrears and all that and we managed to get through all that before we left office in 2016. Since then, a few things have happened. The spine is very crooked now and everybody is unhappy. Everybody is unhappy with the spine.”
President Mahama said the TUC raised concerns about the SSSS it with the government and asked if they could look at the whole salary structure again.
The President reiterated that they were very willing to review the SSSS, so that they would be able to remunerate people better,
This, he said would enable
workers to give off their best in terms of what they asked them to do.
Concerning pensions, President Mahama recalled that a few years ago, they did a new pension reform; saying “Everybody was happy, Tier 2, Tier 3. It looks like the time has come for us to look at it again”.
He said the TUC, as a leader of
organized labour, raised the issue with Government.
He noted that he had told Mr
Joshua Ansah, the TUC Secretary-General and his team that the government was
prepared to put together a working team to look at the whole pension reform and
come up with some suggestions and see how they could improve it; so that
everybody was happy and feels secured going into retirement.
Reverend Isaac Owusu, the
National President of GNAT, in his welcome remarks, appealed to the President
for an immediate review of the single-spine pay policy within this year to
reflect the Government’s Resetting Agenda.
“We are resetting Ghana and so
the pay policy must reflect that Resetting Agenda. It is essential that we
advocate improved salaries and benefits that recognize critical role teachers
play in shaping our society, he stated.
“A well-motivated teacher, your
Excellency, is more motivated and this directly translates into better learning
outcomes for our students.”
GNA
No comments:
Post a Comment