Post falsely claims to show official new salary hikes in Ethiopia’s public sector

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed recently announced an imminent pay rise for public servants. Posts shared on Facebook after the statement claim to provide tabulated figures with the details of the new salary scales. However, this is false: Abiy’s government has not released any adjustments yet. Authorities also dismissed the claim, saying that the changes to public servant remuneration were awaiting parliamentary approval.

A post published on Facebook on August 8, 2024, and shared more than 140 times includes a table of figures purported to show “the new salary scale for civil servants for the year 2017”.

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Screenshot of the false post, taken on August 12, 2024 

The year 2017 in the Ethiopian calendar corresponds to 2024 in the Gregorian calendar.

There are five columns in the table. Starting from the left, they allegedly show the pay grades; the current wages paid to government employees; the anticipated percentage increase; the increased amount; and finally the new salaries. 

Massive pay increase 

At the end of July 2024, the Ethiopian government introduced a comprehensive macroeconomic reform package, which led to a rise in commodity prices after the national currency was significantly devalued as a result of the changes (archived here). 

On August 4, 2024, Abiy announced pay hikes of up to 300 percent, specifically for civil servants in lower income bands to help them offset the economic shocks (archived here).  

The PM disclosed that his government had allocated 90 billion birr ($868 million) for the wage hikes that must be approved in parliament before being implemented.

However, the tabulated data shared in the Facebook post does not show officially-released public sector pay scales. 

Approval first

A keyword search for Ethiopia’s public sector salaries led to a 2019 gazette called “Federal Civil Servants Position Rating, Grading and Salary Scale Regulation No. 455/2019” (archived here). A table showing civil servant salary scales is attached to the document.

The figures in the second column called “base salary” match in the 2019 gazette and the table published on Facebook, but the similarities end there.

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Screenshot of the 2019 federal government workers salary scale and the Facebook table, taken on August 13, 2024 

The rest of the numbers in the Facebook table were likely extrapolated from the 2019 base salaries by calculating increases of up to 300 percent, as mentioned by Abiy.

However, these purported adjustments are in no way official.

Parliamentary approval

The Ethiopian Federal Civil Service Commission rejected the claim (archived here). 

“The information circulating on social media about a new public servants pay scale is unfounded,” head commissioner Mekuria Haile told state media. 

“Any change in the salary scale will be officially announced by the relevant government departments in the future,” he added. “It must be clear that any salary adjustment shall follow regular budget approval procedures by relevant bodies before it comes into effect.” 

The Ethiopian parliament will resume work at the end of September 2024 after the summer break. 

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