The group of private sector representatives will also be required to recommend promotions, enhancements, demotions, salary hikes and re-organization in a fundamental change of operations in government.
Salaries of top civil servants will be revised to match those in similar capacities in the private sector; while Strategic plans will be changed to be working plans with every individual person in the service allocated a duty with an annual deadline.
Whereas the retirement age will be raised to 60 by the end of the year, we have learned that a document scheduled to be tabled as a sessional paper before cabinet by The Minister for Public Service Dalmas Otieno, will also seek powers to extend working days to mid-day Saturday.
"We cannot have a 24 hour economy without extended working hours for civil servants, one of the senior directors at the ministry confirmed in an interview.
The government should where possible introduce flexible service time, to ensure the public is attended to beyond the normal working hours including lunch time and after hours in the spirit of promoting a 24 hour economy, the sessional paper suggests.
The paper shown to us and aptly titled Towards a more responsive Public Service, aims at introducing sound private sector management practices in service delivery and anchors its message on the need to match the private sector by all means, except that the outputs will remain service as opposed to profit.
The paper remains harsh on the performance of the Civil Service saying that even the recent United Nations award was basically an accident and says the right recipients of the award was not an indicator of an improved public service but a gift to a reform oriented government.
We have done so little, we have improved so little, the job has just begun and all I can say is not that we have come this far, we have not made it but at least we have started well, Dalmas Otieno told a gathering at a recent Dinner hosted by the Kenya Institute of Management.
The minister now plans to introduce a fund that would encourage Civil Servants to take Study loans to enhance their skills at an low interest rate.
He is also interested in reforming the benefits and pension scheme of government in a radical measure to open up competition between government and the private sector.
We have the best brains and we want to keep them in the past we have been training them only for the Private sector to offer more money and run away with them, that is going to change we are creating an environment where people will start running from the private sector to government, the paper reads.
On pensions the paper proposes that Civil servants willing to leave the service should be able to access their benefits within a month and when they return they should be allowed to go with a friendly contributory scheme.
It does not make sense to have employees who are just in government waiting for their pension maturity, we should allow their creativity to move when it is needed after all the focus is building a singular economy, but we will struggle to keep them in the service of the public, the brilliantly scribbled paper reads.
Human Resource managers will also be seconded to all ministries with a view of ensuring that staff is better placed to meet the needs of citizens. The paradigm shift will also have ministries identify their recruitment needs as opposed to past trends.
If the policy is approved by cabinet, the government will be forced to do away with the traditional notice board memos and go electronic.
Issuance of some government documents and services will also be transacted via email in a three year old concept of e-government.
Each ministry will be required to hire an IT expert to update the ministerial website to make them virtual offices as opposed to mere Public relations websites with no role in interaction and information disbursement.
At the close of the reforms which I cannot reveal for now (But which we obtained) I should be able to walk to a government employee, confidently say I have provided everything but you have not performed can you leave, or you have done your part so you can stay and you have a promotion, the minister remarked during a vision 2030 forum recently.
The reforms are radical in nature and will take some spine to implement, or face the risk of the sessional paper being one of the intellect laced documents that have gained dust on government shelves over the years.
---
Autor(en)/Author(s): Dennis Itumbi
Quelle/Source: AfricaNews, 28.08.2008
