Takoradi, Jan. 5, GNA - The Western Regional Secretariat of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) would soon begin education programmes in the first quarter of the year to sensitize workers on the government's white paper on the single spine pay policy for public sector workers. Mr Ellis Ankomah, Regional Secretary of the union told the GNA in an interview on Tuesday that the programmes would be mainly carried out at meetings of the various district councils of labour in the region. He said the reasons why payment of the single spine salary would be effected in July would be explained to workers during the educational programmes.

Mr Ankomah said the grace period for the start of the payment of the salary was to ensure the resolution of discrepancies in the report of the consultants of the single spine pay policy and to enable the base pay for the policy to be determined.

He said the policy cannot be implemented without the base pay which would be determined after the minimum wage is fixed and the base pay should not be less than the minimum wage. Mr Ankomah said the TUC had proposed to government to reduce the high income tax on workers salary and widen the tax net to cover the informal sector.