Donors End Bonuses for Civil Servants

Foreign donors have spotted a multi-millon dollar salary supplement scheme for civil servants falter failing to work out the details of the plan’s future with the government, several donors said yesterday. “Some of the government’s partners decided to end the payments at the end of June”, said Hady Riad, a counselor at the German Embassy, which has promoted donor initiatives to combat corruption and ineffectiveness in the under-funded civil service. Salary supplements, known officially as Priority Operating Costs (POCs), were a way for donors to boost modest salaries of government employees working on donor-funded projects. … The POCs themselves were a replacement of a trio of earlier salary supplement schemes criticized for compensating different ministries at different rates and for the wide gap between the smallest bonuses and and the largest. … The donor-funded salary supplements were always meant to be a temporary solution until the government was ready to take on the responsibility of adequately compensating civil servants itself.