Public service inefficiencies unacceptable: Treasury

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, November 8, 2015 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)

TREASURY has raised concerns of the inefficiencies of the public sector through the need for the Public Sector Efficiency Management Review, which Treasury has stated that despite being on the agenda since 2013, desired outcomes have not been achieved.

With the recurrent budget taking just over K9 billion off the total K14.2 billion 2016 National Budget- measures to reduce the consumption of the public service machinery in the money plan have yet to show in the recurrent expenditure with huge blowouts in public servant salaries amongst other expenditures that need to be reigned in.

Treasury Secretary Dairi stated that it was systematic with the good economic run of the economy prior to the current economic situation that has allowed the public service machinery to rack up substantial bills beyond budgeted allocations.

“The public sector recurrent budget for this year is just over K9 billion, and that part of the budget in the PIP (Public Investment Program) which affects most of our people’s lives is just around 5 billion, and that is unacceptable,” Secretary Vele said.

“It is systematic of when you have good times over a period of time instead of having one department, you have one main department and you have a smaller office that has all these little agencies around it.”

“You start having two departments or two offices that actually do the same thing- again we have got to look at all of that wastage.”

He called on the public servants present at the budget lock-up that it was time for the government to attack the payroll.

“Consistently every year we have just above or just below K300 million in blowout of our payroll management. Can you imagine how many roads, schools, bridges we could build with K300 million.”

“We suspect that a lot of those are ghost names- I remember the last time this was done was in 1992-1993 where 17,000 public servants disappeared just like that they were ghost names.”

“One of the issues that has been identified within cabinet is that every public servant must have a national identity card by the end of the first quarter and that is your ticket to be paid.”

He added that measures were in place with money invested into time and access management systems to trialled through the Department of Personnel Management to free up the wastage in the public service.

“Some of us as managers we think that we can rack up these big bills and send them to Vulupindi Haus.”

“Part of our role as public servants is to perform against our budgets, and if we are continually blowing out our budgets at the end of the year we will be held accountable.”