Mendi CS staff demand pay raise

CORRECTIONAL Services (CS) officers are demanding to be paid their 20% pay increase as was promised to them in 2006.
This call was made after last Thursday’s story in The National on the memorandum of agreement signed between the Police Association and commissioner Gari Baki to formalise salary and allowance increase for the Royal PNG Constabulary.
It was also reported that the agreement would hopefully come into effect by the end of the year and would also make police officers become the highest paid public servants in the country.
Sgt Major Jeffrey Pavoja from the Buebi CS in Mendi, Southern Highlands province, said  that CS officers were given assurance in 2006 by their commissioner during the commanders’ conference in Lae that they would be granted a 20% pay increase, but this had never eventuated.
He said they were told that the 20% pay rise would come in 5% instalments every year from 2006 to this year, in which “they were still waiting for”.
According to Sgt Major Pavoja, the efforts of the CS as law and order enforcers had gone unnoticed by the Government.
“We have been overlooked and it is not fair for the commissioner to keep us waiting,” he said.
He claimed he had served 38 years with the CS and would retire soon but was speaking on behalf of the silent majority.
Sgt Major Pavoja  challenged the CS, the Department of Personnel Management and the  union, which he said “has been quiet”, to look into the matter because it was “totally unfair” that the police were granted pay increase when the workload they shared as law enforcers was the same.