PEA to recognise workers’ efforts

National
Source:
The National,Wednesday June 29th, 2016

The main focus of the Public Employees Association is to partner with the Government to recognise public servants’ efforts in nation building.
PEA national president Emma Faiteli, speaking at the union’s 36th biennial congress at March Girls resort in Central, said public servants have been overstressed and have not been given they recognition they deserved.
“This is one of the fundamental errors where the human resources wellbeing is neglected by the Government,” Faiteli said.
“After all, these are the very people which the national visions and plans revolve around and will turn them into tangible results.”
Faiteli said the Government had turned a blind eye to issues faced in the country like the brain drain from the public service.
She said this was a result of the lack of competiveness in the labour market in the public sector.
“We have lost a lot of public servants to the private sector like the PNG LNG or even to overseas firms,” Faiteli said.
“Development in general has been focused in cities and towns resulting in urban drift which has contributed to unequal distribution of elite public servants at the provincial and local level government level in turn hindering delivery of services at the village level.”
Faiteli said that the Government had spent millions (of kina) in secondary and tertiary institutions only to find out that most graduates were shifting in greater numbers into the private sector, where there were greener pastures.
She said discussions at the congress was about  decent work detailed in the International Labour Organisation’s Conventions.