Senior civil servants advise government
over restructuring
By Victor Ebimomi
Reporter, Lagos
Senior civil
servants have advised the Federal Government to review its planned
restructuring of the public service to avoid the mistakes that bedeviled such
attempts in the past.
In a letter to
President Olusegun Obasanjo, the Association of Senior Civil Servants of
Nigeria (ASCSN) said it is not against reforming the civil service, but warned
that if it is not carefully done, it could re-enact what happened in the early
80s which nearly led to the collapse of the service before its was reversed.
The letter was
signed by ASCSN Secretary General Solomon Onaghinon.
“Mr.
President you will recall that an attempt was made at carrying out a radical
reform in the civil service in the late 80s through the promulgation of Decree
43 of 1988. One of the main features of the decree was the professionalisation
of the service through the abrogation of the pool system.
“Witch-hunting became the order of
the day; corruption and nepotism were promoted far above merit and honesty.
Transparency and discipline became alien to the service thereby causing total
system breakdown,” the association recalled.
It frowned at the
plan to de-pool the Finance Ministry, saying detaching such an outfit from the
core structural set-up of the civil service would do more harm than good.
According to the
association, rather than de-pooling, members of staff that are found to be out
of tune with the need of the ministry should be trained and retrained and then
posted to other ministries/agencies that would need their services. “This
is how best to develop and manage human resources”.
The ASCSN faulted
the claim that the civil service is over bloated, noting that the percentage of
workers “is just an infinitesimal fraction” of the total set up of
the public service.
“This
association is equally aware of the feeling within the government circle as
regard the current size of the civil service vis-à-vis the claim that 80
per cent of government resources is being utilised on recurrent expenditure in
the core civil service. This claim is not correct.
“The civil
service is just a subset of the public service. The strength of the public
service is presently put at 987,377 while the core civil service has a total of
strength of 180,000 … compared to the 120 million population of the
country”.
The association
stressed that since the government spends less than 10 per cent on the civil
service it should to turn its searchlight on some “unscrupulous elements
in the ministries”.
It warned that the
country already has many problems to contend with, among which is unemployment,
and that it is unnecessary to create more job losses.
