Single Spine is one-sided – IMANI

Vice President of IMANI-Ghana Kofi Bentil says the only purpose for which the Single Spine Pay Policy (SSPP) was established was to increase salaries of public sector workers and that according to him has been the cause of agitation among these same workers.

“But the problem is one of productivity,” he pointed out in an interview with TV3’s Kenneth Osei Ampofo on Thursday, August 8, 2013.

“We need to fix the productivity problem,” he stressed.

Mr Bentil was of the opinion that workers should be made to earn what they get so that government will not appear to be losing at the end of the day, in terms of poor work output.

He noted that the public wage bill has gone high as a result of aggregation of all salaries including those of parliamentarians, and so it is important a disaggregation is done in order to know exactly how much is expended on the SSPP.

“[After all], the total number of workers on the government pay roll is under 600, 000,” he pointed out, blaming the swelling of the public wage bill on expenditure other than SSPP.

A national forum on the Policy held over a two-day period in the Volta Region capital of Ho has constituted a body to come out with measures to sustain the Policy, which took effect in January, 2010.

Calls already have been made for some institutions to wean themselves from the scheme “so they pay salaries themselves.”

This was hinted by the Head of Public Affairs of the Fair Wages and Salaires Commission (FWSC), Earl Ankrah, on TV3’s 7GMT on Friday, August 09, 2013.