Govt must impose strict work regulations

NEWS of Government wages totalling K5.2 billion last year, which is more than 25 per cent above the budgeted K4.1 billion, should be a concern to all.
World Bank last month released its report: Papua New Guinea Economic Update: Recovery Amid Uncertainty and says by PNG standards, the wage bill represented significant over spending.
Public servants, as government workers are known in Papua New Guinea, are among the better paid workers in this country.
Their employer, the PNG Government, rarely fails to pay them on time every fortnight whether they actually do any work or not.
The public service is a contented workforce and most, if not all, public servants will gladly attest that it is a real privilege to be employed by the Government.
Indeed, public servants consider the PNG Government as the ideal employer, which condones their inefficiencies and pays them very good wages despite the desperate cries of our people for improved service delivery.
We also know now that more than 6,070 unattached public servants in the country are consuming K270 million every year.
Public Service Westly Nukundj says the government is seeking answers as to why we have unattached officers and from which particular departments and agencies.
Most public servants are being paid for doing nothing or doing minimal work, yet the system we have in place continues to pay them for their inefficiencies and ineffectiveness in executing government directives for services to trickle down to the people.
Public servants, unlike private sector employees, are paid a fixed salary with all sorts of allowances for doing nothing or minimal work.

For example, if a public servant has gone AWOL for six months, he or she is still being paid and that is just not right.
In other areas, public servants either work half a day or don’t work at all yet they are still being paid for the full day’s work.
Nukundj has been tasked to look into the issue to make sure that only one person was occupying a position and only that one person was paid on that position (one position, one person, one pay – PPP). He is waiting on the Department of Personnel Management (DPM) to furnish a report of the number of people who were unattached, who is over the age of 60 and due for retirement and those who had been suspended for more than three months.
This is an ongoing issue of payroll over-run that has been a concern for past and present governments with more government money paid as salary to unreliable, unproductive, inefficient absentees and even ghost government employees.
In fact, despite talks of the public service machinery undergoing any drastic structural and operational changes, it has not really happened.
What has changed during since Independence has been the mindset and work output of public servants. While there are many public servants who work tirelessly to serve the Government, there are many more who are totally inefficient and are a burden on the country’s annual budget.
These are the type of public servants who are making a mockery of the system by being regularly absent from work but still front up at the ATMs (automated telling machines) on paydays to swipe their bank cards.
Drastic changes to the public service must ensure that government workers are paid according to the time they spend at work, just like private sector employees.
The Government must impose strict work regulations to ensure public servants perform their duties efficiently and their work output is closely monitored and assessed on a regular basis.