The stand off between the Tonga government and some 3,000 striking public servants has reached a stalemate, as government has begun trying to explain what the salary revision was all about.

Following the rejection by the Public Servants Association of the government's Friday offer of a 12.5% salary rise across the board, back-dated to July 1, the Cabinet met again at 3 p.m. on Saturday.

But PSA executives and anyone else who was anxious to see an end to the strike, and who were hoping that on Monday life would be back to normal, were in for a disappointment.

As had happened the evening before, even though the Cabinet was meeting only 200 meters away from the PSA Vigilance Point on Pangai Si'i, at the end of the meeting Cabinet Ministers simply went home without offering a word to the hundreds of people gathered there, and no one knew what was their decision or if any decision had been made at all.

The Deputy Secretary to Cabinet, Paula Ma'u, told Matangi Tonga this morning, that Cabinet did not make any decision on Saturday afternoon in response to the rejection by the PSA of their first offer.

The first offer was for all salaries to be as they were on June 30, excepting for Heads of Departments who had signed a two-year working contract with the Public Service Commission, the Tonga Defence Services, the Police and the Prison Wards. The rest of the Public service, including Cabinet Ministers would have a 12.5% salary rise.

Government standing firm

Paula said that government was standing firm by its offer because it wanted to proceed with the Public Service Reform program that it launched in April 2002. He said that the backbone of the Reform Program was to reduce the allocation of government revenue that went on public servants' salaries, which was about 57%, by gradually down-sizing the public service.

Paula admitted that the grievances of the Public Servants stemmed from the fact that they were properly not informed and consulted by their heads of departments and by the Public Service Commission of the salary revision program, which was to be in three phases.

Phase I involved the allocation of posts, and it was to be completed during the current financial year. Phase II was to take place in the next financial year and to involve the market valuing of government posts, and then Phase III was to follow in the following financial year with the Cost of Living Adjustment, "and that will be on-going until we decided to adopt a new salary structure system."

Paula put the blame squarely on the Head of Departments and the Public Service Commission for failing to inform the public servants of the new salary structure. He said that a good example of how the grieved public servants did not know about the new structure was that they were still talking about Levels of salaries from Level 1 to 14A, when already under the new salary structure they had done away with Levels, and now there were CEOs, Executives, Administrators, and so on.

"The problem was because that the public servants were informed at the last minute without them knowing anything about it," he said.

Meanwhile, it appeared that Cabinet's solution was for Paula and the Secretary for Finance, 'Aisake Eke, to go on television, and to the media, and explain what should have been done since April 2002 when the Public Service Reform program was launched.

Paula said that for government to accept the "60% 70% and 80%" proposal of the PSA would defeat the objective of the government reform program, "because instead of reducing the 57% allocation of government revenue to public servants salaries, it would increase the allocation to about 67%."

So far the stand off between government and the public servants is a stalemate, as Cabinet has reverted to a tactic of explaining to the public servants what they should have been told before the new salary structure came into force on July 1.