The federal government has for the umpteenth time assured that the harmonisation of salaries of civil servants will be completed before the end of the year.
The head of service of the federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan gave the assurance yesterday at the Head of Service physical engagement/ interview session with the African Initiative for Governance (AIG), on the public service leader’s programmes.
She lamented that there was a huge difference between salaries in the public office.
According to her, “a lot of work is being done on salaries, even right now, I chair a presidential committee on harmonisation of salaries in the public service. And actually, it took a lot of work.
“It’s unfortunate that the differences are quite wide, and that’s the problem that that committee is having right now. It might not be possible to bring those that are high there, down.
“Also, it won’t be possible to bring everybody to that high salary grade level. So what we’re trying to do is to find a way of bringing most people up and then also find what we can do with those that are already very high.”
She assured that a lot of work is being done and that they are working with the salaries, income, and wages commission, adding that the wages commission is also part of the committee, while the budget office is the secretariat.
“The Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Labour, everybody’s on this committee. And the good thing about this is that we all agree that something must be done about, especially those that are core civil servants, that earned the lowest salaries.
“I think we all agreed on that. But the issue now is where…we’re working on it. My prayer is really that by the end of the year we would have come to the conclusion,” she added.