By Own Correspondent

DESPITE an outcry from some sections of civil servants, the National Social Security Authority (NSSA) has vowed to press ahead with civil servants backdated salary deductions.

Currently, civil servants like teachers are taking home net salaries of about US$270 down from US$300 following the move by the government to slap them with pension contributions.

Similarly, NSSA has reportedly ordered the Salaries Services Bureau (SSB) paymaster to deduct US$10 per month from every civil servant backdated to January 2024.

Despite an outcry, NSSA acting general manager, Charles Shava recently revealed that deductions will be effected without fail.

“The law says contributions to NSSA will be based on the currency of income so if an organisation is paying its employees in US dollars their contribution to NSSA will be in US dollars. If it is paid in ZWG, their contributions will be in ZWG,” Shava said, during a session of the Ipec/NSSA Journalists Mentorship Programme for 2024 last week.

“The particular issue of civil servants emanated from the fact that with effect from January this year, the US$300 was converted to a salary and by that operation their contribution to NSSA, because it became salary, had to be contributed to US$. So, as NSSA, we wrote to the Public Service Commission informing them of the need to align with the SI [statutory instrument] which was passed by the government which the Public Service ministry confirmed with another SI to make sure that those deductions are done properly in US$ as per the law.”

He said there was a delay in the implementation of this request from the Public Service Commission.

“I think it only got operationalised in June so I think the Public Service Commission decided that they will possibly. I am not sure whether they deducted all the money all at once or they spread it. I think I saw a letter where they will spread it over three months. But, unfortunately that is an issue that has nothing to do with NSSA,” Shava said.

As the deductions to NSSA began last month, if these deductions continue over the next three months from June that could see these pension contributions from civil servant salaries continue to August.

The reason why they were spreading out the deductions is to minimise the impact of these contributions since it was backdated to January,” he said.