The Secretary-General of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Mr Kofi Asamoah, says the issuance of a White Paper on the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS), though late, is a welcome development. He said the White Paper, which is government's formal approval of SSSS should have been released in September, 2009 in accordance with a road map towards the implementation of the SSSS agreed to by social partners, comprising the government, the employers' association organised labour. The government, on Thursday released its White Paper on the new public sector pay regime with a statement signed by the, Minister of Information, Ms Zita S. Okaikoi that said among other things, that the structure would commence on the stipulated date of January 2010. Mr Asamoah said although the White Paper had delayed, what was needed now was to negotiate the base salary that would be the foundation for the structure and conditions of service for the various public sector works. He said with such an expansive salary structure that covered all public sector workers, organised labour understood that the structure had to be implemented in phases. However, any increases in sa1aries in the implementation processes would take retrospective effect from January 2010, while the phased out implementation would resolve any challenges of a huge wage bill that the government might face. Mr Asamoah said although there would be challenges in the implementation processes of the SSSS, he did not envisage the premature truncation of the processes to the full implementation of the SSSS, as other public sector pay policies in the past, such as the Ghana Universal Salary Structure (GUSS), faced when they were introduced. That, he said, was because of the institution of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) to ensure the proper implementation of public sector wage policy and resolve grievances. Mr Asamoah was, therefore, confident that in spite of the implementation challenges, the structure would at the end of the day, be the policy to instill equity and transparency in public sector pay administration. Source: Daily Graphic