Govt to right size public service The Permanent Secretary to the President (PSP), Mr Eric Molale says the government is working on right-sizing the public service by privatising some of the things currently done by the government. “This means that we hive those people to the private sector and when we do that, we then have to let go of the people who were working for government to go and work there,” he said. Mr Molale said in an interview at the ongoing 10th Forum of Commonwealth Heads of African Public Service under the theme: Improving the political-administrative interface to achieve sustainable development, in Gaborone yesterday. He said the key aspect about interface in right sizing the public service was the fear that people would lose their jobs. “It is not about people losing jobs. We have been talking about this not only with Commonwealth member states but with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), who have been advising us that our establishment was over -burdened and that we need to look at value for money and make savings where necessary to ensure that we focus on the things that we can do best and let the private sector do other things,” he said. Mr Molale said by so doing, the government would be relieved of the burden of paying and sustaining people who are not productive. He said forums such as the Commonwealth have a convergence point around the issue, and that political administration interface ensures that there is better understanding and better role clarity to ensure that things are done seamlessly. On other issues, he said Botswana has learnt from other Commonwealth member states that there was a need to safeguard the safety of the country’s investment and people’s lives. Mr Molale said for other African Commonwealth member states, safety was used as the key interface between politicians and the civil servants. “These are the things we leant and we can adapt to them and make them suitable to our own environment,” he said. He further said he shared with other Commonwealth member states that Botswana’s sustainable development was anchored on ensuring that there was continuity as well as results all the time, as enunciated in the national Vision 2016. He said the country’s sustainable development was also enunciated in National Development Plans of resource stewardship and equitable distribution of resources. “These have sustained us over time because in Botswana politicians provide guidance, civil servants provide implementation face and both of them work together in the interest of the nation to ensure that we continue on the developmental path that we have been pursuing since independence,” he said. The week-long public service forum has brought together heads of public services from Botswana, Cameroon, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Lesotho to share ideas, agree on strategies and mechanisms that would facilitate the achievement of sustainable development goals in their respective countries. ENDS
Posted on: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 09:46:19 +0000
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