SALARY REVIEW BEGINS, TO INCLUDE FORCES’ PHASE II

MBABANE – True to the timelines of the civil service salary review exercise, the firms that were engaged for the crucial exercise are now conducting job profiling in government ministries.

This comes after the Minister of Public Service, Mabulala Maseko, on July 3, 2023, commissioned the much-awaited salary review exercise in the public service. The salary review will also include the implementation of Phase II for junior security officers. “The ministry has, on July 1, 2024, signed a contract with the consultant (Emergence Growth, partnering with a local company, Umelusi Capital) that was awarded the tender. Work towards this exercise has already commenced for a period not exceeding 12 months,” stated the minister.

According to a communiqué that was issued by the Ministry of Public Service, the process kick-started with job profiling. Job profiling is a process of collecting and analysing information about a job to identify the essential functions, duties and responsibilities required to perform the job successfully.

The exercise will also include job evaluation, where the value of jobs in the public service will be assessed in order to determine the worth of individual jobs and the compensation to be paid to employees who hold those jobs.The purpose of job evaluation is to ensure that employees are paid fairly for the work they do. Job evaluation can be used to set pay grades for jobs, to determine the starting salary for a new employee and to award salary increases.

Kick-start

“To kick-start the process, the consultant conducted job profiling exercises for some of the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs staff. More of these consultations have been scheduled all across government,” reads the communication. As per the Eswatini Government policy, the remuneration review exercise, which incorporates job evaluation and grading, is conducted every five years.
The last time the exercise was conducted was in 2016. In 2022 government announced that E15 million has been set aside for the exercise.

However, the minister of Public Service as well as the minister of finance stated in separate interviews that after issuing the tender in December 2022, no consultant showed interest and the ones that showed interest did not have the qualities that the government was looking for. The government had to advertise the tender again until July when government finally signed with the two firms. Noteworthy, the exercise will also inform the government on the posts that are still relevant and those redundant.

The Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenberg, recently told Members of Parliament (MPs) during the quarterly budget performance report that over 5 000 to 7 000 jobs were been found redundant in the establishment register. Further, the Minister of Public Service lamented that government needed around E700 million for exit packages for employees who needed to be relieved of their duties in the public service under the exercise Enhanced Voluntary Early Retirement Scheme (EVERS).

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