The Director of Public Sector Reform Unit, Mrs. Georgiana Kamara, has told pressmen in Freetown that the Government of Sierra Leone, through the Office of the Secretary to Cabinet and Head of the Civil Service and the Ministry of Finance, has recruited an international consultant, Mr. George Smith Graham, who is of reputable standing and has a proven wealth of experience, to oversee the development of a blueprint for the establishment of the Wages and Compensation Commission (WCC).
Mrs. Kamara noted that Mr. George Smith-Graham was the first Chief Executive of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) and served in that position for eight years, leading to the implementation of the Single Spine Pay Policy of Ghana.
Making a presentation of the scope of his consultancy, work done so far, expected timeframe, expectations and challenges leading to the development of the document for the establishment of the Wages and Compensation Commission, Mr. Graham noted that pay equity is a very critical human rights issue across the world, and governments all over the world are striving to achieve it.
Sierra Leone, he disclosed, has been moving towards harmonising salaries and other emoluments, but the process suffered several challenges. He continued that the current process is benchmarking major progress achieved with the 2013 blueprint and that the current work is a continuation of the work done by the previous government.
Mr. Graham noted that his work involves meeting critical stakeholders and also ensuring that, by the end of the day, he produces a friendly document that would eventually set up the Wages and Compensation Commission. He was quick to note that the WCC would be doing a rationalisation of policy and that it would not almost immediately affect the wage bill.
He noted that the consultations with various stakeholders, including members of the Judiciary, Parliament and other critical players, have been able to unravel the issues that would likely confront the establishment of the Commission.
Mr. Graham said that the problem of lack of pay equity in Sierra Leone has been necessitated by the fact that various subvented Government agencies established by various Acts of Parliament have been accorded the responsibility to determine the salaries of their employees without recourse to the HRMO and the Ministry of Finance. Hence Government had to manage a bloated wage bill that is almost 5o% of GDP.
The consultant said that this was what moved the Minister of Finance, Jacob Jusu Saffa, to make a presentation to Parliament during the 2019 budget for Government to establish a Wages and Compensation Commission, which will eventually handle the broader aspects of determining salaries in the public service and also harmonises all the numerous pension laws in the country.
He concluded by noting that the work is expected to end very soon and an Act of Parliament, establishing the Wages and Compensation Commission, is expected to be enacted by July,2019 and the Commission will start work in the last quarter of 2019 and will go full blown next year.