THE processing and payment of Ministerial Staff salaries is coordinated between the Department of Prime Minister & National Executive Council, the Department of Personnel Management and the Department of Finance.
Department of Prime Minister and National Executive Council Secretary Ivan Pomaleu said the Ministerial Service Branch of the Department is responsible for the administration of Salaries for Ministerial Staff consistent with the Official Personal Staff Determination.
He said the current ceiling for Ministerial Staff is around 461, which includes staff for the 33 Ministries, 12 Vice Ministries, Office of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Office of the Opposition and Deputy Opposition Leader and the former Prime Ministers.
“We want to make it clear that we are using the same positions within the 33 Ministries allowed for in law. We basically need to clear out properly the old group whose five-year term has ended before we can fit in the new group progressively as new hires are added on to the list of staff for each ministry.
“The clearing out process and the adding in process are painstaking processes and must be done properly. The termination dates of the contracts for the old group had gone through a number of extensions based on the return of writs extensions, the final batch of the mass terminations were only completed late last month. The flow on effect is obvious but we expect new hires so far to be paid soon,” he said.
Secretary Pomaleu said the delay in the processing of payment is because there is also the processing of payment of over 400 Ministerial Staff whose five-year terms ended on August 5, 2022 as well as processing payments for new hires.
“For staff whose term have ended, the calculation of the final payment for staff who have been let go is done manually and is quite a lengthy process because it involves figures and the staff are very careful not to make mistakes,” Mr Pomaleu said.
“We have our own checkers to check and verify all calculations done by the processors to ensure that calculations are consistent with their level of salary and allowances, commencement dates and the length of service.
“It took our staff about a month to process the first three batches of seven batches, about 150 files, which were delivered to the Department of Personnel Management on September 12 for further checking and verification as part of compliance checks and balance put in place under the payroll management system.”
He said batches four and five were sent to DPM on September 14 while batches 6 and 7 were completed and delivered to DPM on October 18 and November 1 respectively.
Mr Pomaleu said information for new hires of 174 Ministerial staff as of September 17 is currently being put into the Ministerial Payroll System by the Department of Personnel Management therefore, they can expect to get paid in pay 23, November 16.
However, he said that number is bound to increase as more papers for new hires come in.
Mr Pomaleu said for staff in the newly created Ministries, the team at the Ministerial Services Branch of the Department are working with DPM to fill in the positions in current Ministries that have no Minister while positions remain the same to avoid further delays in the payment of their salaries.
In the meantime, the Ministerial Branch Team is working with DPM to include the newly created Ministries or merge Ministries, like the Ministry of Police and Correctional Services into Internal Security Ministry, under the Current Government, consistent with the Ministerial Determination.
