By Dickson Jere
Health Minister Sylvia Masebo has touched a thorny issue – salaries of quasi-government institutions and regulatory authorities. She said they are too high and junior staff even get paid higher than the Permanent Secretary in their line ministries. This is not new problem but successive governments have grappled with it.
In 2010, President Rupiah Banda appointed a Salaries Review Commission to address this issue. The Report must be sitting somewhere at Cabinet Office gathering dust. It had far-reaching recommendations to help deal with the problem.
You see, salaries in public sector must he streamlined for effective performance. ZRA and NAPSA salaries are usually higher than those in mainstream ministries. A director at the ministry gets salary lower than his junior in rank at a parastatal or quasi-government institution. This creates problems. Civil servants usually opt to leave and join these quasi-government institutions when their source of funds is the same.
Further, our Constitution as amended in 2016 provides for the establishment of the Remuneration Commission, which has never been operationalised. This Commission will certainly help deal with the problems of discrepancies in salaries. I hope this will be effected soon to help address concerns raised by Minister Masebo.