Civil servants to opt out of Single Spine Salary Scheme

Kpando, Sept 17, GNA - Mr Edward Tennyson Foli, National Vice President of Civil Servants' Association (CSA), has said that the Association would opt out of the Single Spine Salary Scheme (SSS) if government failed to address the inequalities emerging from the implementation of the scheme. He said civil servants would be disadvantaged when the new salary scheme takes off without addressing grading and remuneration mechanisms as well as the relativity ratios. Mr Foli, who was addressing members of the association at an outreach programme in the Hohoe and Kpando districts, said its scrutiny of the SSSS showed that directors in the districts would be earning higher salaries than their colleagues in the same establishment but in other jurisdictions.

He said the association hopes that all salaries of directors would be static with top ups being allowances or incentives for working in deprived areas.


Mr Foli said he wondered what would happen to the salary of a director who had been transferred from the district to other areas and that the propensity of lowering salary was high according to the tenets of the new scheme.


He said the relativity ratio being used for the SSSS was lower than what pertained under the Ghana Universal Salary Structure (GUSS). Mr Foli appealed to government to demonstrate a strong political will, in the face of industrial harmony, to bring on board all other services like the Ghana Health Service, Ghana Education Service and the Internal Revenue Service who operate difference salary scales for rationalization.

Mr James Amissah, Executive Secretary of CSA, said the association would not be swallowed by the bandwagon effect in the implementation of the SSSS.


He appealed to civil servants to grasp opportunities under the Association's Education Loan Scheme to upgrade themselves academically for enhanced salary and investment in their children's education. Mr Amissah said the association believed in dialogue and that should not be taken as timidity reassuring workers that the unnecessary deductions in their salaries were being corrected but in phases. Mr Omar Amadu-Dabou, Kpando District Coordinating Director, urged workers to change their attitudes to work and time management, which he said was affecting productivity and growth of the district's economy.