Government to establish its school

Government will establish its own government school in order to improve skills, ethics and professionalism in the public sector, Public Service and Administration Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said on Thursday.

 

"This school will educate, train, professionalise and develop a highly capable, skilled, socially and committed public service cadreship with a sense of national duty and a common culture and ethos," Sisulu said in a speech prepared for delivery. "As a recognition of our public need that there is a ‘competency gap filling’ among public servants that is urgent, the school will be established before the end of October this year." 

 

"Our new school of government will as a consequence seek to institutionalise a culture of professionalism and innovative thinking within the public service and serve as a catalyst for reform...," she said. Sisulu said regardless of a person's political orientation, religious background, rank or seniority "for as long as you are a public servant you will attend this school."  She told the Tshwane branch of the Black Management Forum that government existed to meet the basic needs of people. "Governments exist fundamentally to meet the basic and human needs of its people and to create an environment where they can exercise their right to life and right to freedom." 

 

However, government had experienced complexities as a result of influences of the global economic and fiscal crises. Sisulu said the National Development Plan identified that the country needed to improve its efficiency in the state machinery.  She said to achieve the developmental state discussed in the NDP, government must ensure that state administration at all levels was effective, efficient, professional and capable. The first space at which government moved was to engage labour through the 2012 collective agreement, she said. "We jointly committed that our citizens are entitled to have a professional public service rewarded for hard work," she said. To professionalise the public sector, government took a decision to investigate salary levels to ensure that public servants were appropriately emunerated. 

 

"Here the notion of equal work for equal pay has been mooted."  An office of standards of compliance had since been established with the department to promote a high standard of professional ethics and compliance to norms and standards across the public service. "Our view is that this office will detect, intervene and assist in developing managerial and supervisory systems, especially in the areas of human resource and financial management...," Sisulu said.  "Our view is that our citizens’ contact and access to public services and goods must be similar across the length and breadth of our country, irrespective of whether it is in a metropole or rural village." 

 

-Sapa