To make public sector wage important to the health of Ghana’s economy, stakeholders must have a common understanding of productivity and why it should be linked to wage, an official of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) has stated on Friday.
Mr Emmanuel Kwami, Director, Performance Management, Monitoring and Evaluation, FWSC, in an article said, "It will be absolutely necessary that stakeholders have a common understanding of productivity even as the Government commences the tortuous journey towards linking public sector wages to productivity."
In the article copied to the Ghana News Agency on Friday, Mr Kwami agreed with Thornhill (2006) who identified three reasons why productivity was important for the health of a country - the public sector is a major employer, a major provider of services and a consumer of tax resources.
He said productivity defined as the measure of the amount of output generated per unit of input in the public sector, was equally important to the overall economic performance.
Mr Kwami said there had also been a re-examination of the output-input measure, which tends to look at productivity by determining the outcomes achieved by the public sector. "In other words, what many people have in mind when they mention public sector productivity is 'what value they receive from public services in return for the utilization of public funds," he said.
But he also noted that some experts had rejected the idea of including outcomes in productivity measurement, arguing that to focus on outcomes, it would mean judging the government on factors that government had no control over.
Mr Kwami said the phenomenal rise in the public sector wage bill following the migration of over 90 percent public servants onto the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS), had drawn attention to the disproportionate chunk of the national revenue that goes into paying public servants alone.
"Now, perhaps more than any other time in the history of Ghana, many well-meaning Ghanaians are demanding that public sector wages be linked to productivity," he pointed out.
He said national newspapers in recent past had carried stories on how much public sector wages consumed national revenue.
The current wage bill is said to consume about 70% of the total national revenue, which some labour experts had warned that the country risked using up all its revenue in paying public sector workers if careful consideration was not given to their work and their contribution to goods and services.
The FWSC Director said a point that must interest many Ghanaians should be that the Single Spine Pay Policy currently being implemented by the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission, was not limited to migrating public servants onto a new salary structure.
He said one of the object of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission as stated at section 2 b(iii) of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission Act, 2007 (Act 737) was ‘to develop and advise Government and ensure that decisions were implemented on matters related to performance management and indicators.
He added that section 3 (j) of the Act says "To achieve its objects, the Commission shall ensure that the balance of internal consistency, external competitiveness and employee performance are fully reflected in the public service pay system."
Referring to the Government White Paper on the Single Spine Pay Policy, Mr Kwami Government recognised that improved compensation must be driven by improved performance or productivity.
In effect, he added there would be the need to establish a link between the new salary policy and performance management.
He added by quoting the White Paper: "This aspect of the policy is what government will actively engage its social partners to accomplish and thereby properly orient Single Spine Pay Policy as a fair and equitable way of remunerating public servants.
"Government endorses the introduction of a robust public service-wide performance management, monitoring and evaluation system. Once the system is in place, annual salary increments for public servants will no longer be automatic, but based on annual performance assessment."
Perhaps, Mr Kwami said, Ghanaians should also remind themselves of section 98(g) of the Labour Act, 2003 (Act 651), which provides that "without prejudice to the other provisions of this Act and subject to any agreement between the parties, a collective agreement may include provisions on the principles for matching remuneration with productivity.