Public Sector needs better leadership - Nduom

Accra, Oct. 19, GNA - Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom, Minister of Public Sector Reforms, on Thursday said the Public Service needed better leadership with a focus on high quality and timely service delivery to enable the country to achieve its national goals and development objectives. However, this could not be achieved if the Government did not develop the people, who worked in the Public Services by enhancing recruitment, training and performance management to achieve results, he said.

He said the establishment of effective Human Resource (HR) Management Policies and systems to attract; retain and develop a cadre of public servants through training in career and performance management was needed to step up performance.

Dr Nduom was speaking at the 2006 Human Resource Summit organised by the Institute of Human Resource Management Practitioners on: "Public Sector Reforms - The Human Resource Dimension." The summit started two years ago discusses and analyses and articulates human resource issues to find the way forward. He said leaders in the Service should feel significant; act boldly and believe that they had great influence on the lives and prospects of the people.

In this regard, he said, he would prefer to transform the Ministry to become the Ministry of Public Service which should come with a clear mandate to manage administrative and human resource concerns of the Public Services to ensure consistency, equity and efficiency. He said public sector reform was not just about cutting costs and tackling deficits but also by optimising the use of scarce resources to deliver the best available public services.

Dr Nduom said motivation for down sizing had been the combination of fiscal discipline where the Government tried to reduce the cost of public administration and a desire to move towards a more market oriented economy.

Though this was difficult to undertake, mechanisms such as voluntary early retirement, compensation schemes and wage policy reforms such as wage-bill caps could be used.

He said the Civil Service Law, 1993 (PNDC Law 327) was enacted to provide the framework for service delivery by Ministries and to make them responsible for policy formulation and monitoring and delegated implementation to departments and agencies.

Conditions of work must be improved and the Public Sector Pay and pensions reforms must include revised salary structure including the progressive monetization of non-cash benefits across the public sector, he said.

He said most public sector reforms in Ghana have included a significant component related directly and indirectly to human resource management yet the results had not been seen.

He said there was the need for positive results to encourage the Government and the citizens to sustain interest in reforms since it cost a lot of money to undertake.

Mr Kwadwo Asare Bediako, Head of the Institute, said it had been realised that HR Management was a strategic business partner and a strong pillar in any administrative set up.

He said the qualitative improvement in the public sector would be meaningless if it did not begin with building the HR capacity since the level of future development depended on how to utilize the HR of the country.