Accra, April 29, GNA - Negotiations are on-going to determine the base pay that would form the basis for the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS). Mr. John Yaw Amankrah, Director, Pay Policy Analysis and Research of Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) made this known on Thursday. Speaking on the SSSS at the on-going Ghana Policy Fair in Accra, Mr Amankrah said emphasis of the pay structure was to remove the inequities and distortions that had plagued public sector salaries.

He said while recognising the poor salaries in the sector, the Commission was of the view that improved compensation must be driven by performance and productivity.

The SSSS is a unified salary structure that places all public sector employees on one vertical structure with incremental pay points from the lowest to the highest.

Mr Amankrah said the structure ensured that jobs within the same job value range were paid within the same pay range, adding that placement of the SSSS would be done on the basis of the grade structure constructed from the job evaluation exercise.

He noted that the new pay policy had a 25-level unified salary structure for the public service as well as classification of public service jobs.

Mr Amankrah said four main factors, knowledge and skills, work condition, effort and responsibility were the determinant factors on the structure.

These include public sector employees who by the nature of their jobs had to work in some deprived and undeserved areas in the country and therefore needed to be compensated for working in those localities. "These categories of employees need to be compensated through special remuneration schemes, including market premiums and inducements to attract, retain and deploy them to places where their skills are needed," he said. Market premium is an amount paid to attract particular skills, which is above the regular pay range for jobs of same value and is usually paid for skills that are generally in short supply in the entire economy and for which the public sector would have to compete with the private sector. Mr. George Smith-Graham, Chief Executive Officer of FWSC, said allowances would be monetised to ensure that officers entitled to certain fringe benefits are provided on their own. He emphasised that no public servant would be made worse-off under the SSSS.

Public servants would be paid salaries based on the SSSS at the end of July.