10 Jul 2013

Parliament has been informed that as at June 2013, the public service establishment reduced by 1.7 per cent, resulting in cost savings of an estimated P51.1 million.

The Assistant Minister for Presidential Affairs and Public Administration, Dr Gloria Somolekae said this in response to a question from the Member of Parliament for Kgalagadi South, Mr John Toto on Tuesday.

Dr Somolekae said to address the issue of escalating high public sector wage bill in comparison to other middle income countries, government decided to undertake a public service rightsizing exercise starting with freezing the public service establishment growth and rationalisation of existing vacancies to create positions of critical need.

Still in pursuance of the rightsizing programme, Dr Somolekae said government undertook to transform some ministries and departments with a view to improving efficiency and service delivery. She said these included, among others, the Central Statistics Office now Statistics Botswana and the outsourcing of cleaning and laundry services in all major referral hospitals. 

Dr Somolekae explained that there were 4 569 employees in these ministries/departments and 2 506 were absorbed by the new entities, 1 089 were retained within government ministries/departments while 980 were offered early exist packages.

In the process of rightsizing, she said, government had deliberately taken a decision to avoid public service employee salary reductions and retrenchments. This notwithstanding, 980 employees had to date been offered early exit packages as part of the right sizing programme. She said the employees could not be absorbed by the new entities or retained within government ministries as their jobs had become redundant.

She said there were 145 officers at F2-F0 level, 93 of whom were neither permanent secretaries nor deputies respectively and their salaries accounted for an estimated P74 million per annum which constituted 0.54 percent of the public service wage bill. MP Toto had asked the minister to update the house on the public service rightsizing drive announced during the 2011/2012 budget speech.

The legislator had also wanted the minister to further state the number of officers who had lost their jobs to date as a result of this drive, the number of public officers currently at F2 to FO salary scales and how many of them were not necessarily called permanent secretaries of deputy permanent secretaries.

He had also wanted to know the percentage of the public service wage bill that went to these officers who were on salary scale F2 to FO.  ENDS