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The government and organised labour have agreed to standardise allowances to be enjoyed by public servants on the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS).

As a result, about 96 different allowances that were applied unfairly and differentially in the Public Service have been scaled down to 21 to ensure fairness in allowances for all workers.

It will also help the government reduce its expenditure on allowances.

The consensus was arrived at on October 2, 2015 when the Public Services Joint Standing Negotiating Committee (PSJSNC), comprising organised labour, on the one hand, and the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC), the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations and the Ministry of Finance, representing the government, on the other, signed an agreement to that effect.

Allowances

The agreement will take effect from January 1, 2016 when public-sector workers will benefit intermittently from the allowances classified under the SSSS as categories 2 and 3 allowances.

CoEn Consulting Limited, which was engaged in the development of the SSSS in 2006, consolidated about 48 of the 96 different allowances that were being applied unfairly in a job-evaluation process into the basic salary of workers.

It proposed that all other allowances be standardised across the Public Service and the remainder of the 96 allowances that were not consolidated into the basic salary differentiated into categories two, three and four allowances.

Category Two allowances relate to special conditions or circumstances that arise from time to time which require some compensation, such as acting in another’s stead;

Category Three allowances relate to staff welfare, while Category Four allowances relate to the provision of accommodation or a standard of living for a particular position.

Category Four allowances were discontinued when the implementation of the SSSS began in 2010 for better transparency, but they were to be monetised for those who were entitled to them.

Thus public servants who, by their positions, had to be provided with accommodation, vehicles or house helps were to be assisted to obtain the benefits, instead of what pertained in the past when a vehicle was procured by the government for the person at the government’s cost.

Agreement

The agreement, a copy of which has been obtained by the Daily Graphic, was signed by Mr Kofi Asamoah, representing organised labour, and the Chief Executive of the FWSC, Mr George Smith-Graham, representing the government.

Allowances to be enjoyed under Category Two include acting allowance, which was decided on as “the difference between the (acting) officer’s salary and the minimum salary point of the (acting) post or 20 per cent of monthly basic salary, whichever is higher”; additional duty allowance, which was agreed to as “10 per cent of monthly basic salary”, and permanent transfer allowance, which was decided on as “three months, basic salary”.

For Category Three allowances relating to staff welfare, an “employee, spouse and four children of 18 years and below” are to be covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

Fifty per cent of the cost of the management of illnesses not covered by the NHIS is to be paid and “where a child is above 18 but below 23 years and is still in school, he or she shall be covered by the medical scheme”.

An all-inclusive funeral grant of GH¢1,500 is to be given on the death of an employee, GH¢1,000 for a spouse and the same for a child.

Actions

In response to a question as to whether the agreement signed would end worker agitation in relation to allowances, Mr Smith-Graham conceded that worker agitation could arise if heads of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) operated outside budgets approved for particular allowances in a specific year.

For instance, if a budget was approved for the transfer allowances of 200 workers in a particular year and the head of a department transferred 500 people, there would be no funds for the extra 300 people and that could lead to agitation, he said.

He said for that reason, the implementation of the allowances would be in accordance with guidelines developed for their implementation and would also go hand-in-hand with an extensive sensitisation of heads of MDAs.

He said any head that overstepped the constraints of budgetary allocations for allowances would consequently be sanctioned.

Mr Asamoah, for his part, said negotiations on the allowances had been tough but needful to harmonise the plethora of pecks across the public service, some of which were not relevant.

He said with the agreement signed, some workers who, for a long time, had not been benefiting from any allowances at all would now enjoy them, while public sector workers, entitled to allowances that had been frozen since the implementation of the SSSS began in 2010, would begin to enjoy them in 2016.

He said to prevent any agitation, negotiations had been concluded before the 2016 Budget and factored into it to prevent allowances from not being paid.