By: Saidu Jalloh (Intern)
The Minister of Public Administration and Political Affairs Amara Kallon on 5th September 2023 in a press briefing organized by the Ministry of Information and Civic Education at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Building revealed that the government has established the Wage and Compensation Commission to harmonized salary.
In his opening statement he thanked President Bio for appointing him as the Minister of Public Administrator and Political Affairs.
Kallon stated that previously the ministry is now undergoing a transition and that there is a lot of developments activities that has taken place in Sierra Leone for the past four decades and in 1948 in which the Public Service Commission was established and the Public Service Commission was having a lot of responsibilities to recruit staffs for the public. Over the years Sierra Leone has grown. In which a lot of agencies has been established that form the Public Service and Civil Service. The president has thought fit that it has reached a point where we can revisit those laws that established the institutions that was part of the Public Service in this country if they are well seated with international best practices.
Taking over office, Kallon said he had done a familiarization tour and had visited the Human Resource Management Officers ( HRMO ) which deals with recruitment and also visited the Public Service Commission which had the statutory responsibility for the Public Service, and had also visited the Public Service Reform Unit which was established by late President Tejan Kabbah to reform some ministries at institutions in Sierra Leone and also visited the head of Civil Service and Cabinet Secretariat because it is the institution that presided over the HRMO and PSC to get a scope of the ministry and partner with those institutions to move forward.
Kallon said, “We are looking at opportunities and the roadmap established to attract funding from international partners because government funding will not be enough to do the reform in the public service.”
He asserted that, there were two institutions under the public sector, the Civil Service and the Public Service but in the Sierra Leone’s constitution it was only the civil service that was catered for Public Service Act section 150 151 only talked about an institution which the public service commission and not the public service.
“We need to develop a chapter in the constitution that gives a clear understanding of the public service in Sierra Leone. People say this institution belongs to the public service but it is not categorized under the constitution of Sierra Leone,” he said.
“The government have written a Letter to the Africa Pairing Group Mechanism (APRM) requesting for support and help grow our public and civil service commission and they have consented,” he intimated. He explained that in October 5th and 6th the Ministry and the APRM would have a conference in which they will train staffs of the public service sector and do analyses of the public sector.
“We have established the wage and compensation bill. It has gone through parliament stages and the President has appended signature to it. There is now a move to constitute the body of the commission,” he updated the press.
He asserted that the assignment to harmonize salary has a long way to go. They need a data set of both public and civil servant to be inserted into the commission and address the system and salary harmonization.
“We are also working on the Bio identifier and the pin code from the Human Resource Officer ( HRMO), the National Social Security and Insurance Trust (NASSIT) number and National indemnification Number (NIN), how do we harmonize these data so that every Sierra Leoneans will have a single identifier,” he concluded.
