Uneasy Calm At Defence Ministry - Over Unpaid Salaries

There appears to be uneasy calm at the Defence Ministry as civilian employees in all the military establishments across the country have vowed to go all-out to demand their salary arrears from their employers. DAILY GUIDE can confirm that the civilian employees, who are known in the military set-up as �forgotten ones,� will embark on a sit-down strike in the coming days to register their displeasure over undue delay in the payment of their 11-month salary arrears if nothing is urgently done to address the situation. According to the military rules, the civilian employees are not supposed to embark on strike action or join any trade unions to champion their welfare. �We are in a slave trade because nobody among us is bold to come public to voice out our problems due to the many restrictions in our job,� a senior civilian employee told DAILY GUIDE. He stated that because of laws forbidding them to join trade unions and embark on strike actions, officials of the Ghana Armed Forces, who are all military officers, have abandoned the them. According to him, the civilians are silently dying out because they are one of the worst paid public sector employees in the country. They therefore called on the government to intervene in the matter since they can no longer endure the current harsh situation in the Ghana Armed Forces. The paper learnt that after the implementation of the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) for the military in 2010, the civilian employees were paid only two months of their salary arrears while military personnel were paid all their monies. According to the civilian employees, they were not put on the right salary scales after the implementation of the SSSS since most of them have had their meager salaries slashed. �We are supposed to be treated just like our military colleagues. �However, things have turned the other way round as most of our allowances have been dropped in the last few years. �We have been neglected for far too long. We have nobody to speak to in the Ghana Armed Forces. We are suffering too much and we desperately need government intervention now,� another senior civilian employee revealed.