Capping Public Service Salaries

Nov 20, 2019 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

In 2016 the Commission of Inquiry into the Public Service observed the following:

“4.1.1.1 Public Service Structure

186. The Public Service has a diverse workforce of approximately 14,466 employees inclusive of 4,471 employed on contract. These employees are spread over 1,037 different job titles and are classified in the following five categories:
– Administrative
– Senior Technical
– Other Technical and Craft Skilled
– Clerical and Office Support
– Semi-Skilled Operatives and Unskilled

187. We draw attention to the following observations:
Job Classifications cut across almost all Grades.
The most alarming are Grades under the respective classifications: ‘Administrative’ and Support Technical’, starting from GS2 and continuing to GS4 – GS14 (the highest of the Job Grades).

A Job Classification system cannot be used for positions which do not match in terms of their duties and responsibilities. Instead it is used to group positions that have similar duties and responsibilities, require same or similar qualifications, experience and training as relevant”.
The consequent recommendation for reclassification, which was roundly ignored as was the whole Report, was as follows:

– Non-management – Grade 1 – 5
– Supervisory- Grade 6 – 9
– Management – Grade 10 – 14

What was not mentioned was that the current classification system was introduced since the 1980’s and continues to exist – in the absence of any identified team of expertise who could evaluate types and levels of skills across the Public Service.
However, according to the Annual National Estimates, the position of Regional Executive Officer (which is never shown in the Estimates) appears to be encumbered by persons who have the sapiential authority to grade employees of the respective Regional Administrations.
It was the Commission of Inquiry of 2016 who again commented on the palpable irregularity of recruitment of persons on contract to fill regular Public Service positions, and who benefit from monthly gratuities calculated at 22.5% of salary, while their permanent counterparts had to await retirement to earn a pension.
Once again, one is forced to enquire about the compensation provision in the contracts of employment, their periodicity, whether there is an applicable salary scale, with performance merit increases built in.
If so, why should contracted employees further benefit from across-the-board increases? For, according to the COI, contracted employees are simply not Public Servants.
So that when it is announced in SN of November 11, “that ‘Impending Public Service Salary hike will cap increases at 75% in four years”, one is forced to ask: are contracted employees eligible ‘Public Servants’?
What is even more disconcerting is that they proliferate almost throughout all the job grades, so that one is uncertain of the range skills, if any, being paid for.
Which brings us to the more fundamental issue of the proportion of under-skilled Public Servants who are being capped at 75% over four years, with up to 9% increase for 2019.
The accompanying Tables 1 & 2 should speak for themselves. Omitted are the a) Administrative, b) Senior Technical, and c) Other Technical and Craft Skilled categories.

Table 1 – 2019 Public Service
Ministries
Skill Categories Presidency Finance Foreign Affairs Indigenous Affairs Agriculture Natural Resources Public Infrastructure Education Communities Public Health Social Protection Public Security
Clerical & Office Support 192 80 75 15 35 6 40 240 28 155 102 5,308
Semi-Skilled & Unskilled Operatives 99 9 80 29 37 10 61 183 22 688 170 592
Sub-Total Underskilled 291 89 155 44 72 16 101 423 50 843 272 5900
Contracted Employees 479 108 57 59 155 72 232 133 61 791 201 173
Total
Agency Staffing 910 257 381 127 345 93 398 2,884 170 3,262 707 7,658

Table 2 – Regional Administration
Regions # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Clerical & Office Support 25 69 84 68 60 82 24 9 28 54
Semi-Skilled & Unskilled Operatives 405 264 383 198 187 411 140 113 195 158
Subtotal
Underskilled 430 333 467 266 247 493 164 122 223 212
Contracted Employees 34 69 75 66 42 91 81 27 45 47
Total
Agency Staffing 844 1,397 1,992 2,219 1,120 2,263 666 310 746 1,158

Readers can work out for themselves the percentage of under-skilled to total staffing and conclude whether taxpayers are receiving value for money.
But the more critical imbalance in job values arises when the foregoing categories of under-skilled are regarded as greater than those in the teaching profession who are not on contract and who are required to achieve targets of usually positive results in productive human resources. How come teachers are left ‘un-capped’, particularly when most did not benefit from the de-bunching exercise of 2018?
Just see below the comparabilities in value of teaching jobs with those in the very Ministry of Education.
Teaching Service
Temporary Qualified Master II
Temporary Qualified Master I
Trained Graduate
Master/Lecturer I CPCE

Graduate Senior Master Ministry of Education
– Confidential Secretary
– Personnel Officer II
– Regional Literacy
Coordinator

– Senior Schools Welfare Officer
Table 3

Why is there this insistence to ‘under-cap’ the value of these certifiably qualified human resources?
E.B. John

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