New rules for advisers

National, Normal
Source:

The National, Friday December 4th, 2015

 DEPARTMENT of Personnel Management Secretary John Kali says all staff of foreign governments working as technical advisers with public service will end their engagement at the end of this month. 

“This is for the implementation of the technical advisers’ regulation, which will be effective starting next year,” he said.

“(This is) to clarify to our development partners the manner in which the regulations are to be implemented and to dispel any misunderstanding about the impact on our joint development programmes.”

Kali spoke at a workshop with  development partners on the government policy on the engagement of technical advisory support development cooperation programmes yesterday.

“While addressing the issue of sovereignty, namely under the Constitution, all institutions and activities of Government must be under the control of the State and not foreign governments. 

“All technical advisers must sign an agreement with the State under the control of the agency head whom they must support.”

As an example, Kali said technical advisers had no contractual relationship with the heads of the public service where they operated but to their employing government or managing contractors and had no formal allegiance to the State.

In order to allay concerns, the Government has enacted legislation in the form of (citizen and non-citizen) Technical Adviser Regulation 2015. “All technical advisers must be accountable to their agency heads and be subject to performance and conduct reviews against agreed outcome,” Kali said.