Accra, April 25, GNA - Mr Boniface Gambila, Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS) has stated that there was no way delays in the payment of allowances of service personnel at the beginning of their service periods could be prevented.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on the Scheme in Accra, Mr Gambila explained that at the beginning of each service period, it normally takes staff of the Service Secretariat sometime to produce accurate data on personnel.

The delays, the director said, could be minimized only if personnel reported early enough to their places of posting, and furnished the secretariat with the requisite data on them.

Mr Gambila, therefore, reiterated the call on service personnel to act swiftly enough to furnish the NSS with the necessary information to enable it to go through the processes to minimize what he termed "the prophecy on delay" in the payment of their initial allowances. He stated that while efforts were being made to provide service personnel with incentives to boost their morale, user agencies ought to supplement those efforts with the provision of refundable allowances to servicemen.

On staff capacity, Mr Gambila underscored the need for government to review the operational structure of the scheme, so as to allow for the recruitment of more staff to fill vacant positions at the secretariat.

Clarifying the issue of service allowance increments, the Mr Gambila stated that Mr Frank Annoh-Dompreh, president of the New Juaben Municipal branch of the National Service Personnel Association (NASPA), got it wrong when at a recent press conference in Koforidua, he made personnel to believe that their allowance had been increased by 75 percent.

Mr Gambila explained that normally a service personnel was entitled to 75 percent of the salary of his counterpart (at the entry point) in the civil service whenever government came out with new salaries. To set the records straight, therefore, the Director said, the allowance of service personnel would be increased by 75 percent of whatever their counterparts in the civil service were entitled to, and not 75 percent increase of government's new salary.