4 000 govt positions under scrutiny

Shinovene Immanuel

POSITIONS of about 4 000 civil servants were found to have been faulty and are currently being re-evaluated, says Secretary to Cabinet Frans Kapofi.

Asked for an update about the new grading system that government has implemented this week, Kapofi said that government will conclude the evaluation of the 4 000 jobs in about a week’s time.

He said the re-evaluation might be the cause of the delay of payments as they could not pay out workers in categories that are still being evaluated.

Kapofi confirmed that there are people who have not received their new payments as a result of the re-evaluation of the 4 000 people.

According to him, as they researched into who earns what in government, they discovered that there were those who were overpaid and the others who were underpaid.

“We want to make sure that the system works because it is made for the people,” he said.

The salary revamp has attracted criticism as well as praise since its enactment, considering that the current process will affect about two thirds of the 93 000 government employees and its implementation this year cost nearly N$2 billion. The public service has about 264 job categories and each category is divided into four to six functional levels .

The secretary to Cabinet said the new salary structure which would run until 2018 is progressive, despite facing challenges during the regrading process.

“There are difficulties because there are people who are not happy. Some people feel they system is there to take them on which is not the case,” he said.

A section of civil servants have critisised the the new system and some even branded the rewards of the exercise as “peanuts” while another section lauded the new system.

Kapofi said the issues raised by some civil servants are “genuine concerns” and they are working on efforts to address the shortcomings.

The salary changes are contained in a document titled ‘Reward Management’, will be known as the Public Service Pay and Grading structure.

According to a correspondence written by the Office of the Prime Minister at the end of June, “back pay from 1 April 2013 (date of implementation) will start from the second week of July 2013. The correct salary will be on the pay slip at the end of July 2013”.

Government has failed for many years to implement a performance management appraisal system that it adopted and the proposed new system is seen to be its effort to finally put a workable job reward system in place.

The pay structure was set up by the Office of the Prime Minister with the help of British consultants Pilat HR Solutions.

According to preliminary recommendations, teaching and nursing staff, who went on an illegal strike last year, would be among the biggest winners in the salary regrading recommendations.