25 Aug 2021

 Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM) is developing a Talent Management and Succession Planning Strategy aimed at securing the future public service human capital, Parliament has heard.

This was revealed by Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration, Mr Kabo Morwaeng, recently. Minister Morwaeng explained that the Talent Management initiative would cover all critical aspects of an employee’s life cycle from recruitment to separation, including leadership development for all levels. To complement the initiative, he said the DPSM had established an Assessment Centre and Development Centre (ACDC) aimed at standardising the assessment and progression processes across the public service to ensure consistency and quality of selection and progression across government.

On the other hand, the minister told Parliament that the public service had a total of 143 050 employees, a number he said comprised 125 203 and 17 847 employees in central government and local authorities respectively.

“The employees’ monthly wage bill for the month of July 2021 is P2.36 billion, with P2.17 billion attributed to the central government employees and P193 million to local authorities’ employees,” the minister added.

On the other hand, Mr Morwaeng indicated that 7 617 officers retired in the last five years, representing 1.06 per cent of the workforce per annum while 9 025 employees are expected to retire in the next five years (1.34 per cent per annum).

He added that a total of 5 716 vacant positions existed across the public service and the length of such vacancies varied from less than one year to more than four years.

“As much as the recruitment into vacant positions across the public service is continuing, ministries are actively managing existing vacancies to cater for emerging critical manpower requirements. In other words, some vacant posts deemed surplus to requirement are used to create new positions according to need. This is due to the fact that there is no additional budget for new positions, and therefore Ministries have to continuously rationalise existing positions for creation new positions,” he said.

He further indicated that the average age of the public service workforce was 42.4 years, adding young people were already included in the civil service and they rose to leadership roles as determined by the skills and competences required for the positions.

The minster was responding to questions asked by Gaborone Central MP, Mr Tumisang Healy.

MP  Healy had asked the minister to state the number of people employed in the public service and the monthly wage bill.

He also wanted to know the number of officers who retired in the last five years and those retiring in the next five years.

He also wanted minister was to state the average age of the public service force, plans to include young people in the civil service and fast track some into leadership roles as well as plans to change how recruitment was done in the public service together with the rate of progression so as to increase diversity, while identifying top and poor performers so that government work only attracted the best people for the roles. ends