Intensify campaign on SSSS

The Single-Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) simply means having a single pay plan whereby employees on the same pay scale are paid equally.
Under this pay policy, it is possible that some workers earning more than the expected salary would remain where they are or would be placed below where they are earning today. Those who earned less than what they were entitled to would have their salaries adjusted upwards.
It would be recalled that the SSSS was mooted by the immediate past John Agyekum Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government and has been on the drawing board of the finance ministry since 2007.
The Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Dr Kwabena Duffuor, who presented the 2010 budget statement and economic policy to Parliament last year announced that government will implement the SSSS this year to increase productivity, pay decent wages and ensure equity in the public sector.
He further revealed that a five-year development plan has been adopted by government in which the first six months will be used to address some technical flaws to ensure that the SSSS does not bring about inequities.
It is commendable that government is taking steps to widen the consultation and dialogue with unionized labour and stakeholders to ensure that the SSSS is well executed. But what we on this paper are worried about is the low publicity and advocacy that the policy has received so far.
It is quite pathetic to note that majority of the people in the public sector do not even know what this policy is about. If you go to the ministries and government agencies as well as other sectors to find out from the workers themselves, they will tell you they know nothing or have little knowledge about the SSSS.
This explains why the campaign and advocacy work on the policy has to be broadened enough in scope to ensure that workers understand better what the policy entails and has to offer or what the SSSS has in store for them.
This, undoubtedly, behooves the finance ministry to intensify the campaign on the policy across the country to pave way for its smooth implementation.
We at Today, who are so concerned about issues of national interest, take this opportunity to make a passionate appeal to the ministry of finance and its stakeholders to further intensify the campaign and advocacy on the SSSS before its implementation in July this year.
In this vein, the paper also urges all public sector workers to be equally concerned about the SSSS and demand to know from the powers-that-be what the policy entails since it has to do with their welfare.
We hope that the SSSS when implemented would bring better salary incentives and packages to improve the lot of public sector workers and workers generally in this country.