President John Mahama has pledged to review the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) and Pensions, as part of government’s efforts to address concerns of public sector workers.
The President made the promise in his address at the opening of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) 54th National Delegate Congress and Seventh Quadrennial Conference in Accra.
It was on the theme “Education and Development: The Ghana Education Service (GES) at 50: Reflecting, Reviewing, Revising, and Growing the Profession and the Unions”.
The SSSS is a public-sector pay system that aims to standardise wages for fairness and transparency by grouping jobs into unified salary scales.
The Kufuor Administration introduced it; however, negotiations were not complete when Professor John Evans Atta Mills won the 2008 election, with Mr Mahama as his Vice President.
President Mahama said the Kufuor administration, before leaving office, gave a lump-sum increment and imposed a single spine on Ghanaians.
He said, however, that organised labour, led by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), had decided not to accept it and would negotiate with the new government.
“And so it took quite a while for the negotiations to take place. But eventually, we managed to get a working spine. It was not exactly straight, a bit crooked, but at least everybody got something,” he said.
“And so we started paying the arrears and all that, and we managed to get through all that before we left office in 2016. Since then, a few things have happened. The spine is very crooked no,w and everybody is unhappy. Everybody is unhappy with the spine.”
President Mahama said the TUC raised concerns about the SSSS it with the Government and asked if they could look at the whole salary structure again.
The President reiterated that they were very willing to review the SSSS so they could better remunerate people.
This, he said, would enable workers to give their best in terms of what they asked them to do.
Concerning pensions, President Mahama recalled that a few years ago, they did a new pension reform, saying, “Everybody was happy, Tier 2, Tier 3. It looks like the time has come for us to look at it again.
He said the TUC, as a leader of organised labour, raised the issue with the government.
He noted that he had told Joshua Ansah, the TUC Secretary-General, and his team that government was prepared to put together a working team to look at the whole pension reform.
They are to come up with suggestions and see how they could improve it so that everybody is happy and feels secure about retiring.
Reverend Isaac Owusu, the National President of GNAT, in his welcome remarks, appealed to the President for an immediate review of the single-spine pay policy within this year to reflect the Government’s Resetting Agenda.
“We are resetting Ghana, and so the pay policy must reflect that Resetting Agenda. It is essential that we advocate improved salaries and benefits that recognise the critical role teachers play in shaping our society, he stated.
“A well-motivated teacher, your Excellency, is more motivated, and this directly translates into better learning outcomes for our students.”
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