The Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Professor Philip Ebow Bondzi-Simpson has said that government must, as a matter of urgency, restructure the condition of service of public servants in order to keep them focused and content to deliver on their duties.
According to him, even though there have been great efforts through initiatives like the Single Spine Salary Structure, there still exist great disparities in remuneration and service conditions for government staff depending on the Ministry, Department or Agency one finds him or herself.
Speaking at a public lecture organised to commemorate the 2020 Civil Service Week and Awards Ceremony, Prof. Bondzi-Simpson said the principle of Parity of Esteem must be ingrained in the civil service to help in national development. “When similar organisations do not have the same parity of esteem, as a country what do we do? We cause rational people to look out for the best opportunities.
If the revenue service, the health service and the civil service have different conditions of service then what will people be doing? They will be comparing and contrasting and looking for opportunities.
I know this for sure because when I was at the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAG), when you have a lawyer there, he or she would be looking to see what a lawyer at the revenue agencies or the legal services is earning and the conditions and the pecks. Two, three, five years on the people will move,” Prof. Bondzi-Simpson.
For him, the development has led to many fine brains in the public service moving from one place to the other just to seek greener pasture, others unfortunately leave the service for the private sector.
“Unless we recognise that Ghana is one polity and all persons engaged by the Republic of Ghana are to serve in the interest of the Republic of Ghana, we should not unwittingly encourage people to wish to see which service provides better pecks.
The parity of esteem basically says because delivery of the public service cannot be done through one large organisation, we create different ones. In times past and in another jurisdiction the civil service covers everything, but if we have moved from that model it should be for operational efficiency only.
Beyond operational efficiency we should not have significant or major variations in the schemes and worse still in the conditions of service of the different services,” Prof. Bondzi-Simpson added.
Civil Service Week
The Ghana Civil Service, under the auspices of the Office of the President, from Thursday, September 17, 2020 begun activities to commemorate this year’s Civil Service Week and Awards. The celebration, as part of the Public Sector Reform for Results Project, is on the theme: ‘Civil Service and Private Sector Synergy – A National Development Imperative’.
Programmes including the public lecture organised by the Office of the Head of Civil Service seeks to recognise the strategic importance of the synergy between the Civil Service and the private sector for national development. The celebration, which ends today, September 25, is also to honour dedicated civil servants for their selfless service to Ghana.
