Reform in public service

The National Main Stories

PUBLIC Service Minister Soroi Eoe says his ministry and the Department of Personnel Management (DPM) are working to reform the public service including its payroll system to a manageable level.
Eoe said this was one of the recommendations from a review undertaken by the government under the whole of government approach strategy which directed DPM to implement the strategy.
Among a number of critical reforms DPM has undertaken was the retirement exercise which in turn will have an effect on the public service payroll costs.
Acting chief secretary Isaac Lupari when addressing the governor’s conference last week stated that the public service wage bill was K4.6 billion per year.
Eoe said the Government was reviewing these costs working closely with the Treasury Department as an audit had indicated that there were costs that had to be rationalised.
He said total costs could be categorised as follows: essential services (K2.9 billion), administration (K1.1 billion), national parliament (K118 million) and others (K482 million).
Eoe said there was ongoing work to ascertain issues and concerns and he was determined to come up with a clearer and efficient payroll system for the public service.
He said the entire public service comprised the disciplined forces (police, correctional service, and defence); teachers; health workforce; law and justice sector, Internal Revenue Commission and PNG Customs.
This workforce makes up 84 per cent of the total number of public servants on the payroll while only 16 per cent are the balance of national departments and provincial administration staff.
“In total, the bulk of the wage bill is spent on personnel emoluments for essential service workers which accounts for 84 per cent of the total public service.”

9 comments

  • During its entire existence, nobody at the DPM has ever worked. And that will never change.

  • For so many donkey years now we have had pollies and bureaucrats paying ‘lip-service’ only to reforming the public service. No one has had the balls to really get down to the nitty-gritty of it.
    The public service has for so long been a ‘white elephant’ eating up over 35% of the public purse with no credible service delivery and performance outcomes to show for it. There has been so much corruption and misappropriation of funds that was enabled and facilitated by so-called senior public servants, purely because they also benefited from it through kickbacks.
    Ghost names on the Gov payroll, getting paid without doing any work, fraudulently claiming allowances, conspiring with others to defraud the state and thereby the little people of this nation of public funds…you name it. The list goes on.

    The underlying problem here is that no knows how to go about addressing the issue. Where to start? Let me give you a hint where to start. ACCOUNTABILITY. Everyone and everything must be rendered accountable to something or someone. that’s a starting point. Let me know if you need to delve deeper into this…

  • The entire public service machinery need to be overhauled unproductive elements in the system be ejected. Some so called departments and agencies are duplicating roles should be removed or merged. There is so much corruption is the provinces- appointing Tom, Dick and Harry based on whom you know and tribalism. May be all recruitment powers should be reverted back to DPM. My Hela Province in and example.

  • The entire public service machinery need to be overhauled and unproductive elements in the system be ejected. Some so called departments and agencies are duplicating roles should be removed or merged. There is so much corruption in the provinces- appointing Tom, Dick and Harry based on whom you know and tribalism .My Hela Province is a case in point . I think all recruitment powers should be reverted back to DPM.

  • The Chief Secretary shouldn’t make a generalized statement by saying that the public service consumes K4.6 billion per year. Because there is justification in these huge amounts/increases every year if you take a closer look at essential services like HEALTH, EDUCATION, DEFENCE FORCE, POLICE and CS. They are recruiting every year, thus the salary/wages bill increases every year. The task now is with DPM to go by its policy of triple PPP, one person, one pay, one position. Do a human resource audit, sack those not at their work location, fast track retrenchment exercises etc…..
    In the end the government is the mandated body to provide services to its citizens and it can only do that with a well strength workforce capacity.

  • The minister is not serious….Just another passing comment. He was a Public Servant before he became a polly. Did Soroi clean up the National Art Gallery public servants structure during his time??

  • When will the government put Church health Services on ALESCO payroll? Any plan on that

  • Public servants are the back bone of this country and when working to reform the public service including its payroll system to a manageable level.Last thing we want to see and know is that there will be great improvement in all public service sector.

  • What????? K4.6 billion per year… Hmmmmm, I wonder what all these costs are amounted for. We need to see the detailed costs in all these expenditures (the break-ups);
    1) essential services (K2.9 billion),
    2) administration (K1.1 billion),
    3) national parliament (K118 million)
    4) and others (K482 million). .
    I wonder if all the funds added up to K4.6 billion are worth the spending.

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