AMMAN - The government on Wednesday said more than 200,000 workers in the public sector will have an increase in their salaries against a drop in the salaries of nearly 6,000 workers after the restructuring programme is put in place.

“The plan will also see an increase to the public servants’ pension by JD150 and gradually rising up to JD400 depending on the last paid salary and his/her rank,” Minister of Public Sector Development and Political Development Mazen Saket said yesterday at a press conference.

He added: “We understand that there will be strong resistance to this programme especially from those who are getting unreasonably high salaries. But the restructuring decisions will benefit the majority of the public sector employees.”

The minister explained that the programme, to be effective as of January next year, is aimed to address the salaries and allowances for civil service employees, the pension system for those who are still working in the government sector and the salaries and allowances of employees at independent public institutions.

“We are working to address the flaws and imbalances in the salary scales and achieve justice among the public sector workers in order to enhance the level of work quality and boost enthusiasm in the performance of the public sector,” he noted.

He acknowledged that the executive authority’s monitoring of independent government agencies has been weakened over the past years, vowing that the incumbent government would rectify this situation.

Generally speaking, Saket said, salaries in the public sector need to be revisited and studied due to the fact that the basic salaries have not seen any change for over 25 years.

However, new regulations regarding compensation and payrolls in the public sector ensure that allowances are given on the basis of merit, with much of the decision making in this regard left in the hands of individual agencies, as they differ in their mandates and nature of their missions, according to Saket.

Under the new programme, pensions will be calculated on the basis of the basic salary multiplied by 1.25 added to it a 40 per cent professional allowance plus JD75 as the cost of living allowance, according to the minister, who said that the new equation will result in an increase in pensions up to JD400.

With regards to the public sector independent institutions, the minister said out of the 16,000 employees, the salaries of between 6,000-7,000 will increase.

Moreover, Saket said under the new programme the personnel savings funds at independent agencies will not be touched; rather, this service will be generalised to cover all public sector workers. However, the government participation in these funds will not be more than 5 per cent of the workers’ contributions, the official said.

Within two weeks, he added, a new civil service bylaw will be ready and will merge the civil service workers and employees of the independent institutions under the same system in order to have a unified reference to manage and monitor the salaries of public sector employees and to control the expenditure of independent government entities related to salaries and wages.