Fed Govt To Reduce Salaries Of Public Servants

With a view to reducing incurred expenditure by the government annually, the federal government on Thursday expressed its readiness to reduce the salary structure of all public servants in the country. A 12-man committee has been inaugurated to that effect.

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, who inaugurated the committee in Abuja, said government was already overburdened by the recurrent expenditure profile and that the current situation is not healthy for the public service in particular and the country.

The committee headed by Head of Service of the Federation, Sali Bello as chairman has the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission, Chairman, Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Labour and Productivity as members.

Others are Permanent Secretary/Solicitor-General, Ministry of Justice, Director-General, Budget Office of the Federation, Clerk of the National Assembly, Director, (Personnel Management) National Assembly, Director (Legal Services) NASS, Chief Registrar, Supreme Court of Nigeria, Secretary, National Judicial Council and Permanent Secretary, Economic Affairs, Office of the SGF as member/secretary of the committee.

According to Anyim: “The mandate of the committee is to examine the proliferation of different salary structures in the public service in the federation and advice government on how to develop a harmonised salary structure on the basis of reasonable relativities in the grading of the remunerations.”

“Over the years, the Federal Government has been inundated with several requests for salary adjustments and reviews, the affected government agencies have justified their request for special salary grades on the basis of the peculiar nature of their work.

“While this development might have had some positive impacts on the well being of staff of the respective agencies, the incessant requests have given rise to divergent salary structures with very wide relativity gaps.”

Mr Anyim said the committee have three weeks to examine the salary structure of public servants and see how the wide gaps in salaries can be adjusted.

The harmonization of salaries in the federal civil service is expected to reduce the strain of recurrent expenditure and produce an acceptable public salary structure.