As some Batswana continue to raise concerns about the 15% commuted overtime allowance that senior government officials received, the Manual Workers Union has broken its silence on the issue and backed the beneficiaries.
Earlier this year, senior officers got 15% commuted overtime allowance, which evoked a lot of emotions from the public as they questioned why highly paid officers received such an increment but the same cannot be extended to the 'ordinary Motswana'. During a press conference, the Manual Workers Union said that it fully supports the decision to award the commuted overtime. The union differs with the public explaining that the senior officers also deserve to get commuted as their right as public workers. It also elaborated that it considers this one of government's incentives to attract and retain labour force in the public service. “Their 15% increment was committed overtime not their salaries, for those people that fall in the E2 salary scale and above and I want to put it out that those people are entitled to overtime as it is there in the regulations,” Manual Workers Union chief negotiator, Robert Rabasimane outlined.
Rabasimane further elaborated that as the Manual Workers Union, because the senior officers are covered by the Public Service Act, the Union maintains that there is nothing wrong with their 15% commuted overtime allowance. “Employees at E2 and above are employees too and the public Service Act applies to them. If you look at regulation 12 of the Public Service regulation of 2011 that speaks about overtime that everyone who exceeds eight hours is entitled to overtime. Therefore, our position is, they are entitled to overtime according to the law,” Rabasimane said.
Rabasimane stated that as the Union they do not see any mischief in the issue because they acknowledge that the MPs do deserve the increment as they can see that they do work overtime as they deal with them on a daily basis.
