Civil servants assured all deductions will be repaid

PRIME Minister James Marape has reassured public servants who collectively lost K7.3 million in payroll deductions last week that they will be refunded in the next pay.
“I want to assure our public servants that the K7.3 million that was taken out of their pay last week will be reimbursed in the second pay run of the year. This works out to about K60 per person,” he said.
Marape said he queried suspended Finance Secretary Samuel Penias, suspended Treasury Secretary Andrew Oaeke, and suspended Personnel Management Secretary Taies Sansan about the implementation of the dependency rebate during a meeting, to which they replied in the negative.
“This dependency rebate has not been implemented yet, and I directed Treasury not to implement it until it is amended in the February session of Parliament,” he said.
“In the first pay run of 2024 last week, many public servants thought that additional taxes had been imposed.
“I want to assure that this was not influenced by the dependency rebate, which has not been implemented as yet. The problem was caused by the non-configuration of the K20,000 non-tax threshold reverting back to the earlier K12,500 non-tax threshold.”
Marape wants to identify the individuals responsible for the configuration of the tax.
“There were officers who were supposed to input that but were not at work at the time of the first pay run,” he said.
“The irony of this whole tragic incident is that we were supposed to have given benefits to our public servants (but) were hit in the face.”
Also present at the meeting were Chief Secretary Ivan Pomaleu and Justice and Attorney-General department secretary Dr Eric Kwa who are investigating the payroll issue that led to the Jan 10 unrest.