Salary Review for Social Workers Underway to Increase Wages

A review of salaries for social workers across the country is currently underway.  The move is a part of Cabinet’s decision last week to increase the wages for the over 100 employees.  According to the Minister of Human Development, Dolores Balderamos-Garcia, this is a move she has been lobbying for since they got into office.

Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Minister of Human Development: “For many, many years, there has been an awful anomaly that the pay scale for social workers specifically within the Ministry of Human Development has been unacceptably low, very unacceptably low because even the social workers in other ministries like say education and health and the public service, those pay scales have been a lot higher. Now, you might say to yourself, “Why did this go on for so long?” And I myself feel that it is something that was grossly overdue, long, long overdue. So with the help of our senior staff and the input of what they call the Job Classification and Compensation Unit of the Ministry of the Public Service we were able to prepare the paper for cabinet. And I can really say that cabinet embraced it entirely and the pay scale for social workers within our ministry is going to go up to the level of other ministries and also of course the private sector.”

Minister Balderamos-Garcia noted that the public sector has lost several social workers which has motivated them to review the salary packages for them.

Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Minister of Human Development: “I want to add that we have lost, our ministry of human development, we have lost so, so many good people to other ministries and also to the United Nations agencies and other private sector agencies because of the anomaly. And I really, you know, take, I’m humbled by it, but I also take pride that we were able to steer through cabinet and make sure that the social workers of the Ministry of Human Development who take on so much, so very much, are now going to be able to have a parr with other ministries and of course the other agencies like the UN and like that. So I’m very, very pleased that Cabinet has embraced it and that Cabinet paper was approved. And so we can, you know, we can have our social workers, more than a hundred social workers in our ministry be on a pay scale that is commensurate to the work that they do. I want to take the opportunity to big up our human development social workers. They are called out sometimes at midnight. They have to respond to maybe a child on the street. They may have to respond to maybe a mentally ill person. They respond to so, so very, very many issues. Of course, I want to, you know, take this opportunity to say that we expect a lot from our social workers and if we’re going to expect a lot from people, we must give them the respect and give them the compensation that is due.”

Love News understands that there are currently over 100 social workers across the country.