Government not responsible for delays in Single Spine Salary

Mr Kofi Asamoah, the Secretary General of the Trades Union Congress, has said it was not the government, the unions or the Fair Wages Commission (FWC) that was responsible for the seeming delays in migrating public sector workers to the Single Spine Pay Structure.

He said the delays were as a result of the actions or inactions of some management of public sector organizations.

Mr Asamoah was addressing the Ho District Council of Labour (DCL) meeting in Ho.

He said the lingering impression was that Finance Officers and Human Resource managers of the organizations were finding it difficult to appreciate and manage the principles of the policy.

Mr Asamoah said workers should therefore address their blames and queries to their managements.

He said it was unacceptable for organizations to attempt to load fresh personnel data for computation into the Single Spine Salary Structure.

Mr Asamoah said it was also improper for professional groupings to attempt to negotiate new allowance levels just before they were put on the Single Spine Structure.

He said out of the 96 organizations trained to manage the process of changing the new pay policy, only 26 had so far presented their final data for implementation.

Mr Asamoah also briefed the well-attended Council Meeting about the TUC’s input to the 2011 budget including concerns about the raging youth unemployment in the country.

Mr Asamoah said it was improper at this stage of Ghana’s development for the government to want to shirk its responsibility in job creation, hiding under the slogan “it is no business for government to be in business.”

He said low inflation figures did not represent low cost of living and that governments would be judged by the number of jobs they created.

Mr Asamoah recalled TUC’s fight with the government over the hike in utility bills that ended in reduction in the rates and said utility companies must show efficiency equivalent to the high rates they were demanding.

Mr Asamoah called for a national crusade to push the government to bring companies in oil production back to the negotiation table to reverse the current grossly lopsided sharing deals.

He said either that was done or Ghana’s oil would not be of much benefit to the people just as gold productions over the years had not helped Ghana.

Source: GNA