The Civil Servants Association (CSA) yesterday appealed to President John Agyekum Kufuor to call a national debate on a universal salary policy for all workers.

The Reverend Mrs Comfort Drufilla Adu, National Vice-President of the Association, said some organisations are preventing attempts to correct distortions in the salary structure in the service.

Addressing the maiden general meeting of the Ashanti Region Civil Servants Savings and Loans Scheme, she also drew the attention of the Head of Civil Service to the freezing of recruitment of staff into the service particularly for the junior grade.

This situation, Rev. Mrs Adu said, is rendering the work of the service less effective and asked that something should be done about it. She said the association has since 2002 adopted aggressive welfare packages to enhance the image of its members and that it included the establishment of consumer credit scheme, savings and loans scheme, health insurance for all members nationwide and agricultural programmes.

Rev. Mrs Adu said money ranging from 20 million cedis to 40 million cedis had been advanced to all the regions to be used in any venture that could promote the welfare of members. She said bigger operational funds would be given to members next year while the association had also acquired lands in all the regions to build its own offices.

Mr Kwame Asamoah-Dwomoh, Ashanti Regional Chairman of the Association, said the branch had decided to empower its members financially to enhance their life styles. He said the idea to form the savings and loans scheme was to create a mutual fund for members to enable them overcome their short, medium and long term financial problems.