More civil service jobs could go: Chand
Saturday August 18, 2007

Permanent secretary in the Prime Minister's Office Parmesh Chand

The downsizing of Fiji's civil service is likely to take place as part of reforms proposed in the People's Charter for Change and Progress, says the permanent secretary in the Prime Minister's Office Parmesh Chand.

This announcement comes just a week after unions around the country came out of a nationwide strike action as a result of previous cost cutting measures in the civil service by the interim administration.

Chand said the Public Service "has become very large for a country of our size".

"We have as much as 35,000 civil servants in a population of 800,000 people," he said.

"It has become very expensive to maintain this size and a good proportionate of the budget and resources are going into the salary of civil servants.

"Likewise if you have that many civil servants you require building, office space, vehicles and various programmes to keep them occupied."

Chand said that all this is costing a lot of money, "as much as 82 per cent of Government's resources being chewed towards maintaining the current expenditure which is meeting the civil service and operating expenditure".

He said a mere 18 per cent goes to meeting infrastructure and capital requirement in growing the economy."

Chand said the idea is to turn it around and bring the area of capital expenditure or the area which would deliver as growth higher say around to 30 per cent so that operational expenditure be as low as 65 to 70 per cent.

He also said that there needs to be a change in the attitude of civil servants, which has been specifically been proposed in the charter.

"The public servants need to be taught and be made aware that the jobs are not guaranteed for them and they need to work for their salary, they need to produce and deliver at the end of the day what they are being paid.

"That realization is not there much in the civil service. While it has become a career for some it has become a guaranteed job for others and that's why productivity is very low.

"It's just an 8 to 4.30pm job for many of them, but there are some very good civil servants whereas some people just come on the spot and leave on time."

Chand said all these cultures needs to change because it is equally hard to get jobs in the private sector so why it should it be easy for people in the civil service and economy to hold on to it.