Four hundred and twenty three thousand public servants will be migrated onto the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) by June this year, the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) has said. The number constitutes 90 per, cent of the 470,000 public sector workforce covered by the Single Spine Pay Policy (SSPP). The Commission is also working with the Office of the President and the Office of the Head of the Civil Service (OHSC) for a Public' Sector-Wide Performance Management System (PSPMS) for workers to improve on their output for the sustainability of the SSSS. Commenting on how migrating public sector workers onto the SSSS was going to be accelerated, as mentioned by President J.E.A Mills in his State of the, Nation Address, the Chief Executive of the FWSC, Mr George Smith-Graham, said the Commission adopted a strategy to accelerate the migration of workers onto the SSSS at the beginning of the year. The strategy involved, among other things, targeting institutions such as the Ghana Education Service (GES), the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the Civil Service which had majority of public servants to quickly migrate them onto the SSSS. In November 2009 the government accepted the SSSS as the unitary structure for the equitable administration of the public sector wages bill which was to take effect in January 2010. Subsequently, under a memorandum of understanding, a public services joint standing negotiating committee (PSJSNC) was set up in February 2010 to negotiate the base pay and relativities of structure. On July 6, 2010, a base pay, that is, the minimum pay on the structure, of GH¢I,108.08 per annum and a pay point relativity, that is, the percentage differentials between the successive pay points of 1.7 per cent was arrived at. In July 2010, the Ghana Police Service was the first public institution to get paid with the SSSS. Mr Smith-Graham said the GES, for instance, constituted about 50 percent of the public sector workforce, while the GHS and civil servants made up about 25 per cent. He said for the GES, all was ready for the use of the SSSS in the payment of salaries this month, while a job re-evaluation of the health sector was currently being reviewed, with all health service workers and market premium study underway. He said the job re-evaluation exercise for civil and local government service workers had been completed with a job description and analysis to be completed by March this year. Mr Smith-Graham said with about 16 per cent of public servants already on the SSSS, that would mean about 90 per cent of public sector workers on the structure by mid-year. He added that the FWSC 'would concurrently work with smaller institutions to get them on board. On President Mill's plea to organised labour not to make high wage demands on the public purse in order to maintain the sustainability of the SSSS and also honour other commitments for infrastructure and development, Mr Smith-Graham said sustainability of the SSSS was critical and could only be achieved if organised labour, particularly those in the Public Services Workers Union (PSWU), became committed to ensuring an increase in revenue generation. He explained that the PSPMS was the mechanism that would guarantee that workers' output was exactly what was being paid for. On performance management of workers under the SSSS, he said it was a cultural issue that needed careful consideration, for which reason discussions were still ongoing a with various stakeholders. Tentatively, Mr Smith-Graham said, the PSPMS would be finalised in the 'course of the year for the leadership of the public service to be initiated first. Source: Daily Graphic/Ghana