The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HoCSF), Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita has said that the ongoing review of the civil servants' salary structure was not only proper but long overdue.

She said that the workers deserve better pay, considering the critical role they play in driving the policies implementation of the government and also due to the current economic realities in the country.

Oyo-Ita spoke yesterday in Abuja yesterday at the “Service Wide Sensitisation Workshop on 2017-2020 Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan (FCSSIP) for Directorate Level Officers GL 15-17 in the Ministries and Ministerial Departments”

According to her the reform agenda of government might be hindered without a living wage for the workers.

The Head of Service who said the workshop was organised as a platform to update various cadres of the workforce on the reforms agenda of the Efficient, Productive, Incorruptible and Citizen-Centre (EPIC) which the administration is striving to build, also noted that launching a salary review of the civil service was the first step towards enhancing the value proposition of civil servants.

According to her, out of the 1.2 million workforces in the country’s public service, about 80,000 who are in the civil service were extremely poor.

She also said that workers in the Military, Para-military, parastatals, universities, and other agencies, are regarded as public servants, while those in the civil service are civil servants.

“There is a misconception in the country as regards to civil servants salary and the public servants' salary. The public service is the entire gamut of organization that source funds from the government's treasury, but within that public service which makes up about 1.2 million and includes the military, para-military, parastatals, universities, agencies and the poor civil service. These are the various organizations that make up the public service.

“So when people talk about the personal cost of government being so high, they are talking about the entire public service structure but within that structure, there are a few people about 80,000 in number which is the poor civil service. And this 80,000 are the people in the ministries and departments; those are the poor civil service. These 80,000 people are the ones who salaries are extremely poor,” Oyo-Ita said.

She said that what the salary review seeks to achieve was to ensure that civil servants get living wages that would be commensurate to what their counterparts in the public service get.

“You can see that in the public service, what an average public servant on level 16 earns is two and half times more than what a civil servant director in the ministry earns and that director is meant to be supervising that parastatal under his ministry and he is earning only a fraction of the salary what the agencies and parastatals under him are paid.

“These poor civil servants really need attention and we are looking into this under the presidential committee on minimum wages, we will address all these matters so that there's a fair salary structure, the disparity between the public servant and the civil servants is unbelievably wide,” she said.

Oyo-Ita however, regretted that many of the civil servants have not complied with the circular directing them to update their work records and warned that civil servants who have either by omission or commission failed to update their IPPIS records via the online portal would have their salaries stopped.

She said, “I wish to inform you that the portal will close officially today 23 May (yesterday), 2018 but will be opened for corrections until Monday 28 May, 2018 and those that are yet to update their records are advised to do so not later than date as failure to do so will lead to sanctions for affected employee on IPPIS platform.” (Dailytrust)

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