Gov’t commits to resolving disparities in public sector salary scale

Senior Minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for finance, Dr. Ashni Singh said the PPP/C Government is committed to resolving the anomalies found in the salary scale.

He made this statement today, during the announcement of the across-the-board seven percent increase in public servants’ salaries.

During an interview with DPI following the announcement, Dr. Singh said the administration recognised that persons in government agencies were not being compensated on the same level as others in other agencies who possess the same qualifications, skills and knowledge.

This, he said, has resulted in marked inconsistencies across the salary received by persons holding similar qualifications, but occupying different posts depending on the agency in which they work, the post to which they are appointed, and the salary scale in which their post is classified.

For example, a new graduate with a degree in environmental science might be earning $120,000 in one agency while a new graduate with an identical degree in environmental science might be earning $190,000 in another agency.

“We recognise that these disparities cause a lot of distortion, they create perverse incentives… We want to regularise this,” the senior minister said.

To resolve this will take extensive work, he pointed out.

“It is not going to be a simple exercise and that’s why we are not doing it immediately. We have already observed a number of such anomalies, but we want to take a closer look at it across the board; to identify as many of these cases as we can and fix them,” the minister assured.

He affirmed that this exercise will commence in 2022 and that will encompass all of the agencies across the government. Provisions for this will be made in budget 2022.