The concerned ministries and departments have been instructed to submit their recruitment requests by April 5 in order to be included in the Budget 2024-25. The unfilled vacancies from the previous exercise will need to be reassessed.
According to the available figures, around 5,000 positions are available in the public service. The government has initiated procedures for this massive recruitment drive. The heads of ministries and government departments received written instructions on February 28, 2024 regarding the recruitment of new officials. Requests must be made by April 5 to be included in the Budget estimates for 2024-25.
Circular letter No. 10 of 2024 states that “it is incumbent on the Supervising Officer Ministry/Department to ensure that the human resources of the organization are optimally utilized. In particular, he must ensure that human resource needs correspond to the current workload and any foreseeable increase in workload, and that the organization’s human resources are optimally utilized at the level at which they are expected to operate.”
The circular issued by the Ministry of Public Service also encourages officials at all levels to “continuously monitor personnel needs and ensure that individual agents have well-defined roles and tasks clearly oriented towards achieving organizational objectives.
“Thousands of posts that were supposed to be filled during the budgetary exercise 2023-24 have not yet been filled. The Ministry of Public Service states that these unfilled positions will not be filled in the Budget 2024-25.
“Ministries/departments should make a new request for the position to be filled in the Budget 2024/2025 with justifications and explain why funded positions could not be filled during the financial year 2023-2024.”
As for vacant posts for which the Budget did not provide, justifications are requested in order to potentially fill them. In addition to filling vacant positions, the public service is opening the door to creating new positions.
However, there are conditions. “The need to create any new position must be fully justified. It must be clearly stated whether the creation of the new position is justified due to the assignment of personnel to perform functions related to a new objective/policy or the implementation of a project/program.”
Managers must also provide information “on the activities/operations/tasks associated with the new position and what they are supposed to achieve. Where possible, the benefits to be gained should be quantified.”
However, “if it is a new structure, an organizational chart should be submitted, clearly illustrating its links within the larger organization of the ministry/departments with duties, responsibilities, qualifications (i.e. knowledge, skills and abilities), experience, and personal qualities required for the position must be precisely and clearly stated.”
The public service, however, requests that all positions listed in the Budget that have not been filled in the past ten years and are no longer useful to the organization be removed from the Budget. Radhakrishna Sadien: “Many positions announced in the last Budget have not been filled”
A plethora of positions are currently available in the public service. According to unionist Radhakrishna Sadien, president of the State and Other Employees Federation, “thousands of positions are vacant.” He argues that this is the case in all ministries, particularly in Education, Health, Agro-Industry, and Environment, to name a few.
“In addition to vacancies in existing positions, many new services are being opened. People are needed to support them well. I don’t think this is done deliberately. Maybe there is a bottleneck at the Public Service Commission (PSC). I would recommend creating sub-commissions within the PSC with competent people to expedite the work more efficiently,” Sadien says.
Source: Defi Media
