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WE welcome the clarification by the government on the job security of civil servants following the announcement by the Minister of Finance Patrick Chinamasa in his mid-term fiscal policy statement that plans were afoot to reduce the wage bill from 80 percent of revenue to less than 40 percent.

Last Thursday, Chinamasa said the move was aimed at creating fiscal space for long-term growth but had not elaborated on exactly how the government intended to reduce the wage bill. This had caused anxiety and consternation among the 554,000-strong government workers who feared retrenchments were looming.

Yesterday, the government moved swiftly to allay those fears with Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Prisca Mupfumira saying there would be no wanton retrenchments of civil servants but the government would reduce its wage bill through other means.

Weekend reports said a committee headed by Chinamasa had been established to examine options and present to Cabinet its recommendations in the coming weeks. Mupfumira said authorities had no plans to retrench, dismissing reports in sections of the private media which misinterpreted the government’s plan to reduce the wage bill to mean thousands of civil servants faced retrenchment.

“It’s laughable that there has been this misrepresentation. When we’re talking about reducing the wage bill, we’re not talking about retrenching or firing people.

“We’re looking at cost-cutting. There’s a distinction. The process that’s underway, therefore, is not to fire people, but cutting on expenditure. As government, we also want to make it clear that we’ll not act in the manner some companies have by firing workers haphazardly.

“We’ll not do that. No one will be fired. In fact, we’re actually in the process of expediting the Labour Act (amendments) so that we protect our workers and make sure retrenchments are done orderly without firing people randomly.”

She added: “We’ve been on this exercise for the past two months and what we’re doing is very clear. We’re looking at ways of being efficient; increasing productivity. This is work in progress and I cannot state the recommendations because these will be presented before Cabinet, which will then discuss these findings. The report will be out soon, and we’ll make all the recommendations public.”

We applaud the government for moving swiftly to assure civil servants of their jobs and urge it to make the interests of its workers its main priority as it embarks on cost cutting measures. Already, significant progress to develop measures to rationalise the wage bill has been made, with the Civil Service Commission having also completed the physical head count for all civil servants as part of the staff audit.

Mupfumira and Chinamasa are now seized with the arduous task of urgently coming up with remedial measures to gradually bring down the share of the wage bill in the budget from over 80 percent to under 40 percent. The government has several options to tackle its high salary bill rather than retrenching civil servants and contradicting its job-creation policy.

It could, for example, not replace those workers who leave work through resignation or other reasons. The wage bill cut should incorporate all civil service structures including those in senior positions. The government can also utilise measures adopted by other countries in similar positions. For instance, in Ireland, wage bill reductions were carried out at the height of the economic problems of 2008. Job losses were the most significant element in reducing the overall wage costs of private sector companies.

Other measures applied by employers included reducing working hours and a reduction in average hourly earnings.

In Ghana, where wage spending had been a source of significant budget overruns, the government’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility-supported programme included a performance criterion on the wage bill in 2005.

A ceiling was established to support government efforts to bring wages under control, while a computerised payroll for the public sector was developed. Closer home, in Mozambique, similar concerns about a loss of fiscal control as a result of a ballooning wage bill led the government to introduce a quantitative benchmark on the wage bill in its PRGF-supported programme in 2004.The benchmark focused attention on factors underlying wage increases, and highlighted the need to link civil service hiring decisions to overall development objectives and comprehensive civil service reform.

So there are a host of measures the government can use to reduce its bloated wage bill without necessarily resorting to the painful process of culling its workforce.