K3.1b pay-hike bill probed

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By CLIFFORD FAIPARIK
AN exercise is being carried out in government departments to find out why the total civil service salary bill swelled by K3.1 billion from K1.4 billion to K4.5 billion in four years.
Public Service Minister Elias Kapavore said a data-cleansing exercise which had begun should identify positions being duplicated.
The exercise involves the Personnel Management Department in consultation with the departments of Treasury and Finance to verify the huge annual increases to the public sector wage bill.
“The primary records show that the public sector wage bill in 2012 was K1.4 billion. This increased to K4.5 billion in 2016,” Kapavore said.
“While we need the increase in manpower to meet services demands, we must be accountable and prudent in controlling costs and achieving efficiencies.”
Kapavore said the data cleansing exercise would include national and provincial administrations “to establish a one-person, one-position, one-pay status for all public servants”.
“We will make it compulsory for all public servants to be registered through the national identification system,” he said.
“All organisations must improve their staff profiling system to put faces to the names of all public servants.”
Kapavore said he was seeking the cooperation of all sectors to support the government initiative “as we strive to improve productivity”.
Earlier, Kapavore said some public servants around the country were yet to be inducted in the public service system.
“That’s why they don’t know their job descriptions,” he said.
“There are many public servants not been inducted on their roles and responsibility.
“Induction programmes are so important. Once someone is recruited, they must be given their job description so that they will know what is required of them. They must also understand the General Orders and Parliament Acts.”