Members of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has embarked on a nationwide strike after several deliberations with government to remit the arrears that have piled up since last year.
The doctors have over the past weeks raised concerns about the treatment meted out to them by the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission and government regarding their pay policy, as a result; they implored government to pay up all the money owed them before they would resume work.
The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) is also on the neck of government making similar demands. The lecturers have also threatened to embark on an industrial action should government fail in addressing their grievances.
They have warned the incumbent government to pay up their allowances or face their wrath as they abandon the classrooms.
These disturbing actions have since courted controversy over the payment of ex-gratia to Members of Parliament and the treatment public servants are subjected to when they make demands for an increment in the Single Spine Salary Pay Policy.
Albeit the government led by President John Mahama has held meetings with the public sector workers, informing them of its interest to do the settlements in three instalments; from May, 2013 to September 2013 (four months arrears respectively), the public servants have however registered their dissatisfaction.
The two entities claim their 2012 market premiums have not been settled and are calling for a one-time payment.
Despite the agitations of the doctors and the teachers, the FWSC Boss says no employee in the nation is entitled to any market premium but they can only make claims of entitlement to the salaries they receive each month.
Speaking on Radio Gold Tuesday, Mr. Graham explained that the market premiums are allowances paid on other services delivered by the public servants and so, it is only a priority the government attaches to their work.
According to him, the market premiums are “not an entitlement of an employee. And that has to be made very clear. Market premium is not an entitlement of an employee. The entitlement of an employee is your basic salary which has been determined through the evaluation of your job and the grading structure…The other benefit of you as an employee is that you undertake another activity, function and you’re paid an allowance based on that activity that you undertake.
These are entitlements. Market premium is not an entitlement of an employee.”
Meanwhile, governnment is said to roll out guidelines for the implementation of the Single Spine Pay Policy which captures the payment of market premiums to the public servants.
The guidelines, explained by Mr. Graham, “will help boost the implementation of the policy and avoid all the bickering, and sometimes the agitation that normally comes about when we are moving into another phase of the policy.”
He therefore pointed out the real cause of the strike actions by the public servants in the nation, expounding that “the critical issue is this; once government negotiated the payment [the scheduled payment, the arrears], that automatically means that government has agreed to pay the market premium on the 2012 basic salary. That is what it means. Now, they were still asking the question, what about 2013? And so, Fair Wages and Salaries Commission is saying that 2013 will be determined by the guidelines that government is going to issue and they still didn’t understand that. And it’s one of the major grievances that they’ve used to embark on a strike.”
He was optimistic the guidelines would help eliminate the challenges associated with the transitional arrangement of public workers onto the Salary Scheme.
Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana
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