Govt budget on backpays to shoot up

BAME PIET
Staff Writer | Thursday October 7, 2010 00:00

 

It is expected that civil servants will be paid backpays dating back to May 1st when the new Public Service Act (PSA) became operational and the budget for this could run into hundreds of millions of Pula.

National Organising Secretary for National Amalgamated Local and Central Government Workers Union/Manual Workers Union, Johnson Motshwarakgole said yesterday they will be meeting with the Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM) this week or next week to resolve the matter that has left thousands bitter over the new PSA.

Motshwarakgole said that when the agreement was made, the intention was to come up with uniform working hours for civil servants and not to disadvantage anybody, as alleged by some industrial class workers.

'The intention was to have a uniform eight hours a day and 22 days a month for all civil servants, including Industrial Class workers. Even senior civil servants work the same hours as industrial class,' he said.  There are at least 36,000 industrial class workers in government and 28,000 in local government. Parastatals were already working eight hours a day before the Act. The feeling among the industrial class workers was that the union leadership sold them to government by increasing working hours, while salaries were not increased. One of the affected employees at Gaborone City Council told Mmegi this week that their counterparts employed as Permanent and Pensionable have had their salaries increased to equate the new working hours.  'Everybody has to be paid for the time he has worked for, even if it is minutes,' he said.  Motshwarakgole said they recently realised that the industrial class workers were left behind and was confident that they will get their dues with all civil servants at the end of this month.

Industrial class workers include carpenters, electricians, auto mechanic, welders and others and have been working 7.45 hours a day which has since been increased to 8 hours.

The civil service has over 200,000 employees.