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Emanuel Abela, Director of Information
I refer to the articles entitled “Civil Service reform” and “Do ‘grease monkeys’ vote?” published on Business Today of the 4 and 11 October 2006 respectively, whereby your correspondent chose to rely too much on the usual rhetoric while perhaps underscoring the incessant efforts being made to both trim and prod the Service towards increased performance.
As to the size of the Service this is also a legacy of past history and is being addressed through a policy of natural wastage and controlled recruitment, where new recruitment is only being allowed, as your correspondent himself points out, in areas that are ‘specialised areas crucial to national policy’. It is also to be noted that it has now been established policy for some time that most new recruitment requires a high level of education and competence. In this way ‘over-manning’ is being reduced slowly but constantly while, at the same time, critical shortages in other areas are being addressed. This policy has managed to reduce the overall size to its lowest in recent years with an obviously marked reduction in the total recurrent wage bill.
As to claims of lack of discipline, interference, prolific bureaucracy, etc. it is worthwhile for your correspondent to note that last year 51 persons were dismissed from the Service. Hundreds more were disciplined. We are not claiming perfection but labels and platitudes, be they positive and negative are simply what they are, clichés.
As to time rigidity, the present situation is that circa 60% of the government workforce has for long been delivering a service on a ‘round the clock’ necessity basis. Just mention the hospital/health services, the police, the army, passport office, etc. Action is being concretely taken to focus on the remaining areas where increased flexibility is desirable. This summer ministries have been piloting a flexi-time schedule for the Service with each ministry adopting the schedule that suits its’, and the public’s, requirements best. Just to cite one example, practically all offices within the Office of the Prime Minister worked on a 7.30 to 5.45 time-table Monday to Thursday with half day on Friday during the months of June-July (despite there being a World Cup!) and September. Thanks goes to management and staff who took part in this project as well as the unions that extended their fullest cooperation. It is hoped that these systems will be further developed and entrenched very soon. But here also, it is not true that all workers work on a reduced timetable or a fixed 8.00 to 5.00 timetable in winter. There is no one-size-fits-all.
As to the more efficient deployment of manpower, government had recently set up a team to focus on redeployment of resources across government instead of resorting to new recruitment. To its credit, even with the heavy constraints on the ground, this initiative has managed to forestall practically all requests for new employment at all lower levels. Let us not forget that accession to the EU has placed increasingly heavy loads on the Service almost in every area – till now this load has been practically absorbed without increasing the workforce in any significant way. Have we forgotten that it was thanks to the “bureaucrats” of the Public Service that Malta managed to absorb the acquis communautaire, with some marked successes, in half the time at the disposal of the other nine new members?
If one can draw a moral from all this, it is that the Public Service has always been, and will probably always remain, frankly not only in this country, the proverbial punching bag where to vent one’s frustrations for every conceived ill. Changing mammoth organisations has never been an easy task and the continuous search for increased performance and efficiency should be a constant in today’s super competitive global environment. It is, and will remain, an evolutionary rather than revolutionary, reform process journey rather than a final destination.
This is especially so for the Public Service but it also requires a popular cultural change and support for it to properly succeed. Your readers may rest assured that as the Principal Permanent Secretary tours as many of the ministries and departments as he possibly can, you do realise that unjustified and generic criticism gets at our people particularly those who not only do an excellent job but at times go out of their way to provide a sterling service.
The Principal Permanent Secretary publicly salutes them and thanks them all for a very thankless job. |
