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Civil servants’ pay devolution delays

Government’s effort to decentralise payment of salaries for the civil service has failed to set off despite an earlier assurance that the system would roll out by September this year.

Initially, government said it had finalised all paperwork to facilitate the first phase of transferring its powers and responsibilities of processing civil servants’ salaries to district and local councils by September 1, 2016.

Ligomeka: We are now concentrating on expanding the regional bandwidth
Ligomeka: We are now concentrating on expanding the regional bandwidth

However, random checks by The Nation revealed that government had not yet started using the system as civil servants’ salaries in local authorities are still being processed at Capital Hill. Only teachers get paid at council level.

Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development Principal Secretary Stuart Ligomeka, in an interview yesterday, confirmed the development but indicated that the first phase of the exercise would start by January 2017.

“Decentralisation is actually a process. We are now concentrating on expanding the regional bandwidth because the 2mbp was not enough for the centres to transact information for establishments of more than one ministry so we had to upgrade the fibre cables to 6mbp,” explained Ligomeka.

Civil servants
Civil servants

In the first phase, accounts officers from the councils will be travelling to prepare salaries at six centres that have been created before the system rolls out to other councils. The centres are Mzimba, Kasungu, Lilongwe, Zomba, Blantyre and Mulanje.

According to Ligomeka, the centres would soon be commissioned for the Department of Human Resource Management and Development (DHRMD) to start entering data for employees that will be moving from the central ministries establishments to council establishments.

“By January 2017 officers from the councils will no longer be travelling to Capital Hill to prepare salaries because all these centres will be operational and be able to prepare their own salaries and print their own pay slips.

“The second phase will be for the Ministry of Finance to buy equipment such as computers and servers which will be installed in each and every council. Thereafter, the establishments will move from the six divisions to each council and we expect by June 2017 all councils in the country to be operational,” said Ligomeka.

Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development spokesperson Nations Msowoya said government has already started procuring the required equipment and a consultant dealing with network assessment was already on the ground.

All along councils’ accounts officers have been preparing salaries for each sector and travel to Capital Hill to process them then take them back to their respective districts.

The issue of paying salaries to local authorities is in line with the Decentralisation Policy of 1998 which calls for government’s commitment to devolve some of its powers to the local authorities.

This payment system has been prone to robberies as in some cases accounts personnel were carrying the salaries in hard cash.

But once the new system is in place, Ligomeka assured that cases of delayed salaries in the civil service will drastically be reduced.

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