Parliament reinstates position of chief secretary

PARLIAMENT has reinstated the position of chief secretary to the Government, Prime Minister James Marape says.
“The chief secretary’s position was abolished in 2019 after I took office in 2019 to allow government ministers to work directly with their departments to deliver to the people,”he said.
“However, we are reinstating this position after realising that the public service work force had been failing in leadership and standards.
“Management leadership levels and performances have dropped without day to day administration oversight.”
Marape said there had been no leadership or lack of leadership at the operational level and the Government was now determined to put some form of order back into all departments and agencies.
“Through this bill, we are restoring the office of chief secretary where all departmental heads and agency heads report to his office.
“The chief secretary will ensure that public service follow directives in compliance to Government’s directions and are consistent with their performances with their constitutional duties,” he said.
Marape said all departmental heads were expected to report to the chief secretary to present their annual performance reports as required by law in March 2023.
Public Services Minister Joe Sungi said the office was not doing enough to monitor performances and reports of provincial administration heads because they did not have a clear reporting system.
“Most of the implementations and the policy coordination is at the provincial level, so office of chief secretary will hold into account the performance all the departmental heads,” he said.
“There 121 Government agencies with about130,000 public servants and 65,000 are teachers.”
Sungi said the position was in place some years ago, but provincial administrators abused those powers and was thus abolished.