Public servants should earn their pay

Editorial

MORE than 6,000 civil servants currently being paid for doing nothing is an insult to those who are actually working.
A civil servant is an official or a bureaucrat representing the government and works in an office or a department.
As government workers, they are known to be among the better paid workers in this country.
Their employer, the Papua New Guinea Government, rarely fails to pay them on time every fortnight, whether they actually do any work or not.
There are about 200,000 public servants in the country with an annual budget of over K170 million paid out in fortnightly salary.
Yearly budget would stand at around K4.4 billion alone on salaries.
Two sets of explanation has been given on why this has come about. Department of Personnel Management secretary Taies Sansan explained that those civil servants were unattached and still on the payroll for various reasons – some due to reaching retirement age, medical conditions, the selection and recruitment process in progress, and some due to technically unattached, meaning they didn’t win any position and are waiting for their agencies to deal with them, such as paying them out or attaching them to other positions.
On the other hand, Public Employees Association general-secretary Peter Togs said political leaders should be blamed for changing the law (District Development Authority Act 2014) which allowed district administrations and MPs to “hire and fire” as they wished.
“When they bring their cronies, relatives, friends or whoever to work in the district administration, our public servants in the districts are displaced,” he said.
“This is because of decisions made by MPs to displace career public servants.
“There are two people paid to do the same job.” It has been reported that public servants salaries and other benefits cost over a third of every year’s national budget.
A small segment of the population consuming a third of the national budget would ordinarily raise questions and very high expectations from the taxpaying public.
It is a necessary expenditure that ensures government keeps functioning so teachers, health workers and others are out there to provide for the public.
There are hundreds of government workers who are dedicated to their jobs and would even stay on their posts and strive to do their best with very limited resources.
The issue here is not so much how much money is being spent on the public service but what output is generated through such spending.
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 such as those 6,000.
These are some who are making a mockery of the system as well by being regularly absent from work but still front up at the automated telling machines (ATMs) on paydays to swipe their bank cards.
It is time for drastic changes to be made in the public service where government workers are paid according to the time they spend at work, just as the private sector employees.
The Government should impose strict work regulations to ensure public servants perform their duties efficiently.
Their work output should be closely monitored and assessed on a regular basis.