Zimbabwe studies Ghana’s pay administration structure
A Zimbabwean delegation is in Ghana to understudy the country’s pay administration system to enable it to design its own payroll architecture to address public remuneration challenges.
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The delegation, led by the Ambassador of Zimbabwe to Ghana, Kufa E. Chinoza, and the Commissioner of Zimbabwe’s Public Services Commission, Professor Carroll T. Khombe, paid a working visit to the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) in Accra last Monday.
An earlier delegation visited the commission in 2021 on a similar mission.
Purpose
The purpose of the visit was to learn about the implementation of Ghana’s Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) and to replicate the same in Zimbabwe following persistent agitations over salary disparities in the country.
The SSSS was formulated to reinstate equity and transparency in public service pay administration.
At the FWSC last Monday, the Chief Executive of the commission, Benjamin Arthur, who received the team, expressed the readiness of the commission to continuously share ideas with Zimbabwe to support the establishment of a robust payroll system.
He said Ghana had attained considerable experience in the implementation of the SSSS and had put measures in place to review the system after more than a decade of its implementation.
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Mr Arthur urged the delegation to ensure that it engaged all stakeholders at every step of the development process.
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That, he said, was to ensure that the system that would be developed would be acceptable to all parties to achieve industrial harmony.
For his part, Prof. Khombe said Zimbabwe’s efforts to set up a payroll system that was similar to the SSSS would have been incomplete if they had not visited the FWSC.
Unrests
He said the country in recent years had been challenged with labour unrests as workers were demanding that their remuneration was tied against the dollar rate.
“We want to learn from the spine salary system.
We do not want to wait for the crisis.
We want a system that continuously works and makes us proactive,” Prof. Khombe said.
Single Spine
The Government of Ghana established the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission by an Act of Parliament in 2007.
The policy was implemented in 2010 to regulate public service workers’ pay, especially those under Article 190 of the 1992 Constitution.
In a presentation, the Director for Research, Monitoring and Evaluation and Head of Public Affairs, FWSC, Earl Ankrah, said the objective for the development of the SSSS was to, among others, promote equity in the administration of public service pay.
He said the FWSC had thus far ensured a reduction in salary disparities and distortions and the achievement of “Equal pay for Equal work” in tandem with Article 24(1) of the 1992 Constitution. — GNA
