President of the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Angel Carbonu, says while it is assumed that public sector workers take the largest chunk of government’s internally generated revenue, “the fact of the matter is that majority of public sector workers are impoverished in this country.”

He was speaking on the recent Ghana Statistical Service report which had revealed that more than 80% of public sector workers earn less than 3,000 cedis, with the lowest salary being 418 cedis.

According to Angel Carbonu, successive governments have refused to address the huge salary disparity in the public sector, and have rather pitted Ghanaians against the sector whenever there are demands for higher wages.

“We’ve even made demands from government that whenever government makes a statement that public sector workers are taking this percentage of internally generated revenue, then we tell government ‘ok, let’s sit down, let’s disaggregate them into portions, and let’s see who actually in terms of numbers takes the huge quantum of the amount of the internally generated revenue, who actually takes what home and who is actually taking the bigger chunk of the pie,’” he said on JoyNews’ PM Express.

He said when the breakdown is finally done, it would most likely be discovered that political appointees take quite a considerable chunk of the government’s fund as compared to the public sector worker.

“For us, let us even see how much from the government kitty goes to these people and compare it to the public servant or the civil servant who has been working for the past 20 to 30 years and find out how much he or she also takes home, then you’ll begin to see the unfairness in how we dish out monies to people as compensation for work that they’ve done or work that they have not done.

“This argument is always raised whenever government seems to excite the sympathy of the public to indicate that ‘o they’re taking this huge percentage of our internally generated revenue every year, therefore when they come to make demands, tell them they’re not entitled to what they make.’” he said.

According to him, till the issue is appropriately addressed public sector workers will remain impoverished.

“At the end of the day, the statistics show that public sector workers are taking huge chunk of the revenue, the fact of the matter is that majority of public sector workers are impoverished in this country,” he concluded.