Treasury will provide new money to fund pay increases for critical and personnel-heavy professions; others will be funded from departments' existing budgets.

The government has taken a new approach in an attempt to rein in the rising cost of paying public servants: only give increases to frontline and labour-intensive professions. National Treasury has allocated R111.4-billion over the next three years to adjust the pay of public servants in the departments and professions that it deems to be critical, such as education, health, police, defence and correctional services.

It is a step change in how Treasury approaches remuneration in the state. In previous years, all public servants, regardless of which department they worked in, would be in line to receive a pay rise.

Of the R111.4-billion pencilled in by Treasury, about R24-billion will immediately go towards helping to fund pay increases of 7.5% for public servants in the current fiscal year (2023/24) that it didn't fully budget for, which left a big hole in public finances.

The balance will go towards remuneration only in personnel-heavy sectors, including health, education and the police service, over the next three years.

Since 2020, Treasury has attempted to implement a pay freeze in the public sector to stabilise the cost of paying SA's 1.2 million public servants. But it failed to do so as it faced pushback...