Dept wants more workers in districts

ACTING Secretary for the Department of Implementation and Rural Development (DIRD) Aihi Vaki says 70 per cent of public servants must live and work in the districts to serve the people.
He said 20 per cent should live and work at the provincial headquarters and 10 per cent at government agencies in Waigani.
Vaki said the department was now looking at extending its offices to the provinces where monitoring, evaluation and compliance assessment on Service Improvement Programme (SIP) funds such as the PSIP (provincial service improvement programme) funds and DSIP (district service improvement programme) funds are expended accordingly to benefit the people in the districts and communities.
“We need to cut down our public servants at Waigani,” he said.
“Most of our public servants must live and work in the districts.
“We should have 70 per of public servants in the districts, 20 per cent at the provincial governments and only 10 per cent at the national level here in Waigani.”
Vaki said DIRD as part of improving its role of overseeing the implementations of government funds will have officers in the provinces to ensure actual inspections on projects and programmes are done.
He said the government under its reform of rightsizing the public service must ensure, only 10 per cent of its officers are at Waigani while the rest should be out in the provinces and the districts to serve the people.