PUBLIC Service Commission (PSC) chairperson Mariyawanda Nzuwah yesterday accused Cabinet ministers of causing a bloated government workforce by demanding “unnecessary support staff at a time Treasury is operating on a shoe-string budget”.
BY XOLISANI NCUBE
Presenting oral evidence before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, Nzuwah said most ministers were pestering his office for additional staff to their offices even when it was clear that they were already overstaffed.
“We have provincial ministers, 10 of them, and when they are appointed, they will come to you and say I want a private secretary, I want a personal assistant, I want a director and so on and so forth, the question you ask is, what for? Don’t we have a district administrator?” Nzuwah asked.
“If you refuse to give them these people, they will tell you that I am stifling their work, but this is duplication of duties. We have a district administrator and a director in the office of a provincial minister doing a similar job. We can’t have that.”
The commission boss told the committee that government was working on modalities to cut down its wage bill from 83% of the total State expenditure to 53% and this would include redeployments of public workers and abolition of redundant positions.
So far, the PSC, according to Nzuwah, had abolished 22 000 posts and made various recommendations to cut the bloated workforce.
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He said some of the measures included stopping recruitment of relief teachers and withdrawal of salaries for teachers in private schools. Nzuwah also said last year, the commission embarked on a public service audit which unearthed various anomalies with indications that over 3 000 people were still on government payroll although they had long left the civil service.
Meanwhile, PSC secretary Pretty Sunguro told the committee that Treasury had moved pay dates for the rest of civil servants to March 31 due to financial constraints.
