11 Sep 2016

Public Service employees have been called on to trim down excess spending on activities that do not add value to government delivery machinery.

Permanent Secretary to the President, Mr Carter Morupisi made the plea when addressing deputy permanent secretaries and directors of departments in Gaborone Friday (September 9) that it was critical for them to be able to utilise the available resources and maximise the benefits in terms of the delivery machinery of government.

He said they should appreciate that government had not been able to meet budget provisions for past few years, hence they should avoid wastage.

''Particularly that you are in the executive cadre, you are supposed to be responsible for ensuring that decisions of government as and when they change, you cascade them to junior officers to ensure they understand the tide where things are moving towards,” he said, adding that running an organisation like government with huge numbers of people was a challenge especially with regards to the way they responded to changes.

He said the revenues generated by government were not enough because there has been a bad patch in terms of the biggest revenue earner; being the minerals, which had significantly affected that which was at the disposal of government to run the affairs of the country.

He also called for consistency and similar understanding of issues that were carried out throughout government departments.

He called on them to consider finding some new technologies that would assist in doing things better and quicker in service delivery.

With regards to long term training of staff, he said over the years, various ministries and departments had not been making maximum drive in terms of ensuring that donor development partners training opportunities available were utilised. 

“I want to encourage you to ensure that you utilise any available opportunity for in-service trainees of government to utilise those slots,” he said.

He discouraged managers from disadvantaging employees that were not in the training plan not to go for training where there were opportunities.

“Even as we observe the training plan, at the same time, if one is in the training plan and an opportunity arises where the cut-off point in certain institutions that person  (in the training plan) cannot make it, let us provide opportunities for other employees to go for training, without leaving skeleton staff within a unit,” Mr Morupisi said.

He condemned the bureaucratic processes of disallowing those not in the training plan to go for training, adding that other nationals would use the scholarship as most of them were competed for.

Mr Morupisi said as a matter of skills development, part-time training should also be encouraged whereby employees served during the day and benefited in a training programme offered after hours.

On other issues, he said furniture deemed unusable should be repaired by local institutions such as prisons and brigades.

Mr Morupisi further called for control of overtime and not allow people to earn more than 10 per cent of their personal emolument at the end of the financial year. ENDS