Dented Morale as Government Houses Employees Miss Out on Salary Increase

The Agency for Government Houses(AGH) has approved the recent salary increase for 120 employees who had mistakenly been excluded, while complaining about the impact on morale of 600 employees who were denied an increase as they had already attained the salary ceiling indicated by the directive.

The 600 unfortunate individuals are complaining of unfair treatment, claiming that the directive was introduced to help all civil servants to mitigate the increased cost of living. The Ministry of Civil Service (MoCS), however, affirmed that the directive excluded those who have already attained the salary ceiling for their post.

It was on August 2, 2014, that the government announced the salary increment for government employees across the country, without any prerequisite for the adjustment, to be retrospectively effective from July 2014 – the beginning of the Ethiopian fiscal year. Before the Agency fell under the civil service in 2008, having previously been established as an autonomous agency by proclamation, its employees used to receive a 10pc pay increase each year. One employee, who spoke anonymously, had already attained a salary of 1,184Br during the 2011 salary increase, after which his salary remained static. But the salary ceiling for his post is 1123Br.

“When the government made an increment in 2011, our employees exceeded the ceiling, due to the 10pc annual increase they received when the Agency [the Agency for the Administration of Rented Houses] was administered by the labour union prior to 2008,” says Addis Ejigu, the agency’s public relations & communications head.

After that, the Agency was re-established as the Agency for Government Houses, as an autonomous body under the civil service by proclamation 555/2007. The employees who already had salaries beyond the civil service scale maintained their salaries, however, and enjoyed further increases in 2011 – most of them by then reaching the peak of their salary scales.

When the latest directive was implemented, over 700 employees of the Agency were left out under the assumption that all had attained the limit set by their salary ceilings. That, however, included 120 who should legitimately see an increase in their pay.

“There were employees whose increment calculations were not done correctly according to the directive,” says Addis. “These employees have received corrections and were paid the difference on August 17, 2014.”

The Agency, however, had communicated with the Ministry of Civil Service (MoCS) about the morale of those employees who were disappointed that the directive excluded them.

But the stand from the MoCS is firm – the “directive needs to be implemented according to the specifications put in it”, says Misrak Mekonen (PhD), state minister at the MoCS.

In the last letter the agency wrote to the MoCS, on August 27, 2014, it was stated that the incident had demoralised the employees.

“This had a significant impact on workers and we are waiting for a reply from the concerned bodies of the government,” says Addis. “When the salary scale was done, the agency’s own scale was not considered and the increment was made according to the orientation that the finance and the human resources department took. This resulted in some employees not being made beneficiaries of the adjustment.”


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