By: Julius Konton
In a drive to improve public service delivery as part of a rigorous reform process, the Civil Service Agency has announced that it will begin a robust reclassification process across various ministries and agencies of government.
Reclassigication is, among other things, the process where Civil Servants will be directly assigned on a particular job based on qualifications and / or credentials.
The process, which started over three weeks ago at the House of Representatives, will see about three hundred people reclassified , disclosed Director General, Dr. Josiah F. Joekai.
“We are conducting the process gradually and professionally in order to ensure that we get rid of unqualified people and replace them with qualified ones.
According to him, they have developed a module of verification that is completely different from others and was tested at the House of Representatives.
Painstakingly and meticulously, our team spent three weeks at the house of Representatives, we have done our forensic verification, spot check counting process, we sat there to reclassified and regularized the statuses of all of the employees and we will present a comprehensive report soon”, he explained.
However and shockingly he disclosed that 9000 people within the CSA don’t have fitting High School paper but are occupying key roles within their respective areas while 6281 only have high school papers and are also occupying key roles, this he noted needs to be worked on.
“Imagine seeing someone with a high school diploma but is a budget analyst, what is he really going to analyze effectively,” he wondered.
He acknowledged that there are challenges, but they are working to ensure that gradually these challenges are addressed scientifically using data and not from the blue sky.
Over a year now, the CSA Boss stressed that the workforce is a testament to the work he has done so far at the CSA.
The government he pointed out is changing the dynamics gradually.
Unlike before, institutions now have annual reports and not for the sake of annual reports, but these reports he indicated are backed by data which they are using to make informed and scientific decisions.
Among other things, some of the data shows a huge gender disparity within the sector, something he wants to be worked on.
As part of such data, 69% Civil Servants are males while 31% are females as such, he urged the females to muster the courage , get prepared and ready to fully participate in the process in order to join the new revolution in improving and making better the public space.
Speaking on other issues, he disclosed plans in the making by the CSA with the National Commission on Higher Education to address the growing needs of carrer counselors for Liberia students beginning with the higher education sub sector.
“When people applied to enroll at any institutions of learning , they need to be counsel and career counselors are professional people who are able to alien students backgrounds with their rightful future career goals something he stated is lacking and has an impact on the sector.
“That is why we keep having mixed matches, we have people with degrees but we don’t have the jobs for them because of the career path they chose and when you force it and put them in the system, you get square pecks in round hole and we need to change that and now is the time”, he re-emphasized.
He said it is now time to put people at their rightful places based on their respective backgrounds, but it all starts with firstly preparing them to where they belong directly.
Liberians he indicated are smart, strong, and resilient people, and once the right things are done, the better and desire results will be achieved.
According to him once the right people in line with their respective career are brought on board, Liberia will have an efficient and effective workforce, build on professionalism and efficiency on the job which will in return ensure an efficient government that will deliver effectively with civil servants doing doing their jobs and not the political people.
