Public servants to get back-pay - Bakwena

CHANDAPIWA BAPUTAKI
Staff Writer | Thursday September 9, 2010 00:00

 

DPSM director Festinah Bakwena said yesterday that they have agreed with the unions that permanent and pensionable employees whose salaries were calculated based on 20 working days, in line with the old Public Service Act, should be paid their two days as required under the New Public Service Act.

Bakwena said all the affected employees would be paid their two days backdated to May 1, 2010 when the new act came into force.

'There are financial implications on this looking at the amount of money that would be paid, but they (workers) would be paid their monies as soon as the process is complete. The union's issue was that it took long and we agree with them,' she said.

She conceded that government has also taken long to pay the 15 percent of the basic salaries in the Pension Fund for the industrial class workers who are now employed on a permanent and pensionable basis. 'There is a lot of financial implications there, but we are working on it.

We thought because the employees were at different levels in their employment, with some having a few years less than five years to go for their retirement, they could consider options that we had as the new Act states that the employee should not end up with worse conditions than in the previous Act.

We agreed with the unions that we would give people options to convert and that is when we set up the Task Force whose report we just got last week,' she said adding that DPSM will next month go around the country to teach the employees about the options so that they understand what they entail before making any decisions.

She further revealed that on the issue of the hours of work for teachers, they are almost at the end of their process of calculating how much the hours would cost.

'We are at the end of our process even though we have not told the unions yet.

We had to seek a mandate to negotiate the allowances because we could not seek the mandate before knowing how many working hours (are involved) and what those hours would cost.

At the end of the process the teachers will be paid their dues backdated to May 1, 2010 too,' she said emphasising that public employees are expected to work only eight hours a day.

She revealed that the manual workers who were working 7.85 hours had given their 15 minutes to government at no cost to work eight hours.