Ms. Sherry Ayittey, Minister of Environment Science and Technology, on Wednesday reiterated government's commitment to implement the Single Spine Pay Policy (SSPP) which holds good prospects for the Ghanaian public servant.
She appealed for support for the implementation of the policy to help address inequalities in the salaries of workers.
Ms. Ayittey was responding to questions posed by staff of Food Research Institute (FRI) of Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) at a durbar during familiarisation tour in Accra.
She said that the implementation of SSPP in July, this year, would help make public service pay competitive for the attraction and retention of highly-skilled labour force.
Ms. Ayittey explained that the new pay policy was a unified salary structure that would place public sector employees on a vertical structure, making sure that, jobs within the same job value range were paid the same salary.
She said it would replace all existing salary structures in the public service including the Ghana Universal Salary Structure (GUSS).
The public service currently has over 90 different salary structures as well as over 65 different types of allowances which she described as cumbersome and difficult for government to effectively manage the public sector wage bill.
Ms. Ayittey said the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) charged with the responsibility for the implementation was in dialogue with key stakeholders to agree on modalities for its effective implementation and
sustainability.
"The team hopefully will complete their work on rationalisation by June and the issue of professional allowance will be looked at followed by the implementation," she said.
On the issue of low budgetary allocation, Ms Ayittey urged management of FRI to make a strong case for every item on the agency's budget and
justify them accordingly to enable government approve a more substantial allocation for its operations.
Dr. Papa Nii T. Johnson, Acting Director of FRI, cataloguing some achievements of the institute, noted that it had successfully developed and transferred rice parboiling technology as well as extension in high quality
bambara flour project to help improve the rural livelihood of people in the Northern Region.
He said the institute had in addition, developed technologies for production of high quality convenience food flour from cassava, maize, plantain, and cowpea which had help to sustain the operations of about 90 industries nation-wide.
"We have developed recipes and recipe manual for diversified food uses of various agricultural commodities for increased production and food safety," Dr. Johnson said.
On health, he said through the institute's community nutrition intervention, the institute had been organising community nutrition
awareness workshop to address hazardous food related issues.