HR managers must give advice, says secretary

HUMAN resources managers in government departments and provincial administrations need to give proper advice to have effective delivery of goods and service, a senior bureaucrat says.
Secretary for Personnel Management John Kali said this on Monday during the Pacific Human Resource Managers Network Conference.
Kali said 60% to 70% of the government’s budget was appropriated for the salary of public servants.
He said the huge budgetary allocation “tells that public service is a major investment in the country”.
“If we have a huge budgetary allocation, why can’t we turn this huge money appropriated for public service into something that will generate income and better the life of Papua New Guineans?” Kali said.
He said the role of human resource managers was seen previously as a job to facilitate recruitment and salaries of public servants.
He said that had changed into a very vital job that was to manage public servants to effectively carry out their duties to improve the social life and economy of the country.
Kali said the department had now moved away from being one that “gives orders to other government departments and provincial administrations as their employer to being a department that is inclusive and work to achieve effective public services by building capacity of workers from the day of their recruitment and their working environment while serving as public servants”.
The department would be launching new public service general orders next month.
He said the new general order would help government departments and provincial administrations carry out their own capacity-building and human resource management programmes while the department measured and provided the enabling tools to carry out that role.
Kali said in the current general orders the department was more focused with its own internal matters and “does not assist in building the capacity of its human resource officers”.