By Bida Elly David
The Governor of Central Bank of South Sudan said they have released money for paying six Months’ salary arrears of Civil Servants and the organised forces across the country in a bid to guarantee continuous payment of monthly salaries without delays from July.
The major aim of unravelling the 6 Months accumulated arrears was conceded as a mechanism to familiarize a new payment system where every civil servant receive salary after thirty days without delays or accumulation to avoid complete economic recession and claims.
Over the past years up to date, Civil servants have been facing a series of remuneration challenges as their salaries have been delayed for six to seven months without being released on time. This made two third of them resort into small scale businesses to earn living and cover some of the impediments hindering their standard of living.
Speaking to the media on Friday, Moses Makur Deng the Governor of the Central Bank said the payment of the salary arrears would be finished by the end of June with the possibility of starting new payment scheme in July.
“Currently we are paying the public service or the civil servants their salary arrears. We started paying them two days ago and will continue paying them up to the end of this month and if we finish payment of this two months, we shall also pay salaries for another two months after 18th of this month and on the 28th, 29th up to 30th of this month, we shall have finished paying the 6 months’ salary arrears for the civil servants and by July, regular payments for civil servants would start’’ Makur said.
“According to our schedule, we need to make sure that all arrears are paid to all civil servants within June and after this month, there will be no arrears to be paid. What we are planning and working on is how to guarantee the continuous payment of salaries monthly’’ he said.
Furthermore, Moses said that the current civil servant salaries are not reasonable since it is too low thus they had to review and ensure that employees receive on time.
“The current salary structure for civil servants is not reasonable indeed. There will be no agreement on the reasonable salary but it is assumed and determined by average family size. They normally put the family average size to five members. You and your wife and three children”.
However, government salary will not determine the high basic necessity one wants to have especially the desire to live a luxurious life of eating expensive food.
“Our major aim is to ensure that civil servants receive their salaries after thirty days respectively but not the amount of food one eats to determine your salaries and wages’’ Makur added
Finally, Moses underscored that after clearance of the accumulated arrears, citizens, government employees should expect no delays of their salaries beyond one month.