Pay rise for public servants

By AILEEN KWARAGU and COLIN BUNGEWA
PUBLIC servants are expected to receive a three per cent pay increment by December, as part of a deal reached in 2016 to award them increments every three years.
Department of Personnel Management (DPM) secretary Taies Sansan said they were now working with the Finance and Treasury departments to ensure that all 129,000 public servants received the adjustments to their pay and allowance by the end of the year.
The Government had allocated K42 million in the Supplementary Budget approved in Parliament for the public servants’ pay rise.
“The increment also comes with the agreement for the DPM to continue the public servants’ medical and life insurance scheme,” Sansan said.
The DPM yesterday signed an agreement with the Public Employees Association (PEA) for the increment on salaries and allowances from 2022 to 2024.
Sansan said the PEA sought a 7.5 per cent increment in 2019 which the Government did not respond favourably to in 2020 and 2021 because of the impact of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) on the economy.
“This resulted in the PEA lodging the claims to the Industrial Registrar in November 2021 as a disputed matter for registration purposes to the Public Service Conciliation and Arbitration tribunal,” she said.
“The tribunal, through all parties, took into account the State’s affordability, and awarded the three per cent of general salary increase in February 2022.”
Sansan thanked the PEA for accepting the Government’s financial position and accepting the three per cent increment.
“The prudential 7.5 per cent general wage increment was reduced by more than half to three per cent for the period 2017 to 2019 that has been fully implemented by the Government,” she said.
PEA acting president Brett Philip urged public servants to be productive and efficient in their duties.
He told public servants that their trade union was a responsible one which “understands the economy, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Special General Order No. 11 of 2019 that delayed their efforts to have the agreement signed sooner.
The three per cent pay increment was a three-year award agreed to by the Government in 2016.
The last increment was paid in 2019.