Public Service News from around the world

UK officers act out their passions

LONDON (December 24): United Kingdom Public Servants are being sent for acting lessons costing up to £650 ($A1,125) a day at the country’s leading drama school.

Whitehall Departments have engaged the services of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to help Public Servants perfect their presenting skills.

Officials are given voice exercises and taught how to relax their lips and mouth, such as by making “horse noises” and blowing kisses. Those who suffer from stage fright are given useful hints on how to combat butterflies by tensing and relaxing muscles in their abdomen and buttocks.

The day-long courses teach individuals how to become a “more powerful and confident presenter at work” and “how to make a strong entrance and opening” that will “leave your audience with your message resonating in their minds”.

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Retirement age rise to go ahead

ATHENS (December 18): Phased increases in the retirement age for Greece's Public Servants, introduced in 2015 after being made a condition by international lenders, are constitutional, the country’s highest court has ruled.

The Council of State ruled against an appeal lodged by the country's biggest umbrella union for civil sector workers, ADEDY, challenging the legality of the measure.

Judges ruled that changes to retirement ages were in line with the Greek Constitution when they were intended to help ensure the survival of the social security system, as was the case with the 2015 reforms.

“The gradual increase of retirement ages is aimed first and foremost at rationalising the pension system by preventing early retirements before the legal pensionable age,” the judges stated.

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Ultra-Orthodox get PS quotas

JERUSALEM (December 21):  The Israeli Government has announced it will reserve seven per cent of Public Service places for ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim).

The quota will be phased in over three years to create more employment opportunities for the growing number of Haredim with academic degrees who are entering the workforce.

                                                                                   

Haredim in the prime working ages of 20 to 64 account for about nine per cent of the population in that age cohort, but only seven per cent of the labour force because of their low workforce participation rate.

Only around 11,000 Haredim, 3.5 per cent of total enrolment, are studying in degree programs. Many spend their entire lives in religious studies.

                                                                                    

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Presidential appointments ‘damaging’

DACCA (18 December): A major anti-corruption body has called upon the Bangladeshi Government to revise provisions in the Civil Service Act which it says are “damaging to the environment” of public sector workers.

Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) singled out the right given to the President to appoint 10 per cent of employees in the highest four levels in the Public Service.

“If the scope of satisfactory promotion is not enforced without specific criteria, then the democracy, efficiency and experience of the public administration will be depreciated and professional development will be hampered,” TIB said in a statement.

It also criticised the provision giving the right to dismiss employees without any reason after they had completed 25 years of service.

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‘Nonsensical’ decisions a PS norm

BELFAST (December 22): A Northern Ireland Government economist has admitted to a public inquiry that Public Servants regularly make decisions which would seem nonsensical to the man in the street.

Shane Murphy told the probe into the failed Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme that Public Servants believed there was a much bigger picture and even though the rules might seem absurd to them, they trusted there was a grand plan which they could not see.

He made the comments as he was pressed to explain why the decision had been made to set up an RHI scheme in preference to a much cheaper grant-based alternative.

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Tens of thousands to lose jobs

NAIROBI (December 18): President Uhuru Kenyatta has announced that thousands of Public Servants will lose their jobs in a massive retrenchment beginning in February.

Nearly 39,000 employees will be retrenched, according to a staff audit report originally published two years ago.

Kenya has about 700,000 employees in the public sector, including 199,921 Public Servants in the National and County Governments.

Firing was deferred until after the recent General Election to avoid a voters' backlash against Mr Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party, but now the Government has decided to bite the bullet and cut the soaring public sector wage bill.

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Phoenix pay backlog drags on

OTTAWA (December 18): Latest figures show the trouble plagued Phoenix pay system is not coping well with the changing demands of the Canadian Public Service with a backlog of 54,000 cases relating to revised collective agreements still to be processed.

The report also reveals that about half of the Government’s 300,000 employees are experiencing a pay issue of one kind or another.

Minister for Public Services and Procurement, Carla Qualtrough put the blame on the implementation of 20 of the 27 core Federal Public Service collective agreements since September, with the consequent needs for pay adjustments.

Noting that the backlog would start to decline in the New Year, Ms Qualtrough said it was “historic” that the Government had been able to negotiate 20 collective agreements in less than two years out of the 27 that had expired.

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Youth rebels on TV licences

BERNE (December 21): The editor of Switzerland’s German-language public service television network has been asked to explain why the country’s young people should be forced to pay licence fees for “television and radio that serves an old and aging public”.

Tristan Brenn faced a grilling from an audience of communication students with the principal question being the 450 Swiss Franc ($A588) mandatory licensing fee per household per year.

It will be Mr Brenn’s job for the next three months to persuade not just students but all of the Swiss electorate of the value of public service broadcasting.

On March 4, voters will be asked to weigh in on a referendum to abolish the annual license fee that covers about three-quarters of the public broadcaster’s budget — a move supporters of the operation say would put it out of business.

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President to probe PS loans

HARARE (December 21): Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has promised to look into deductions from Public Servants’ salaries by loan sharks.

This was in response to the Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) that had sought his intervention on the deductions.

More than 30,000 Public Servants have reportedly had money deducted from their salaries by loan sharks to service loans they say they never took out.

Some of the affected workers claim they have been left with just a few cents in their pay packets after the loans were deducted.

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Training grants scheme rorted

SINGAPORE (December 21): Five alleged members of a Singapore criminal syndicate have been charged with scamming a Government training grants scheme.

It was claimed in court that that the group had defrauded SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG), of $S40 million ($A38.5 million) through making bogus claims.

The court was told that the group submitted forged documents to obtain subsidies and that the suspects reportedly belonged to “an organised network that utilised nine business entities, comprising employer companies and training providers, to submit the fraudulent claims”.

Commenting on the case, a former presidential candidate, Tan Kin Lian, said it showed “the deplorable state of our Civil Service and the political leadership”.

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All is not equal in Brexit body

LONDON (December 20): The United Kingdom Department for Exiting the European Union has the second widest gender pay gap in the Public Service at 15.26 per cent, new figures show. Only the Department of Transport is higher, with women earning 16.9 per cent on average less than male colleagues.

The figures show that women are paid less than men across the Public Service, with a gap of 10 per cent in seven other Departments.

The lowest disparity is three per cent in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

The head of the Public Service, Sir Jeremy Heyward said the data was a "matter for concern".

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 Terrorist victim tops PS test

SRINAGAR (December 19): A man whose home was burned by terrorists 18 years ago, forcing his family to flee their village, wants to return there as a Public Servant.

Anjum Bashir Khan (27) has topped the Public Service examination for the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir. He says education is the best way to change the destiny of youth and he will work for it in his ancestral area of Surankote.

"There is no point of making it to this service if I'm not able to go there and help people. Becoming an officer is one thing, but what's important is that you should help your society. The society from where you have come," Mr Khan said.
 

More than 12,000 candidates appeared for the State Public Service examination and only 51 passed.

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Workers must prove they are genuine

YAOUNDE (December 19): A total of 2,817 Cameroon Public Servants whose pay has been stopped have until January 18 to come forward and prove they are genuine, the Minister for Public Service says.

Michel Ange Angouing said so far 14,134 Public Servants were presumed to be fictitious. People on the current list had been sent numerous formal notices.

“If they do not respond they will be purely and simply deregistered from the list of Civil Servants, in accordance with the legislation in force," Mr Angouing said.

He said the Government was determined to “mitigate the phenomena of fictitious Civil Servants or of Civil Servants who had left their posts, but were still receiving pay and entitlements.

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Need for ‘better face’ in pay deal

KINGSTON (December 21): Jamaica’s Leader of the Opposition is urging the Government to think again over its hard-line attitude to Public Service pay negotiations.

Peter Phillips said there was a need for the Government to show a “different and a better face to the workers of Jamaica”.

His comments follow those of the Shadow Minister for the Public Service, Lambert Brown, who described the Government's offer of six per cent as a “gimmick”, saying that Minister for Finance, Audley Shaw was “taking the workers for fools”.

Dr Phillips, who was Minister for Finance in the last Government, said he was fully aware of the need to keep the wage bill under control, but at the same time recommended that the Government should be seeking to improve whatever benefits it could for the workers.

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Auditor General lays down the law

ACCRA (December 23): Ghana’s Auditor General has warned Departments he will not tolerate attempts by senior Public Servants to impede his work.

Daniel Domelevo insists officials cannot determine when they want to release information or dictate to him when they are ready to be audited.

Quoting the 1992 Constitution and the Audit Service Act, Mr Domelevo said he had the mandate to audit public institutions when he saw fit, adding, it was “criminal” for any official to deny his office any document.

"Some misbehaviours continue for a very long time and people think it is normal and it becomes law...people have done it with impunity over the past and gotten away with it. I will cite any official who flouts the Audit Act,” Mr Domelevo said.

The full Public Service News international news service resumes on January 23 at psnews.com.au/aps/world