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Staff turn over in the Public Service

Oct 03, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,

I refer to your article titled ‘Public employment falls by 10.9%’ that was published on the 13/9/2022 and would like to offer my comments. It was very well articulated but it mostly addressed the economic side of things as it relates to the low pay, high turnover and shortage of staff in the public sector. It ignored the challenges and hardships of the employees who are left to shoulder the burden of getting the work done with fewer resources than they would have liked.

As someone who has worked over a decade in the public service, I have observed that staff turnover is at an all time high. But what is most alarming is the time taken to fill the vacancies. It takes months and sometimes years for vacancies in the public service to be filled but the work still has to be done. There are many staff who have to work during lunch and after working hours because their department/organisation is severely understaffed. They are doing so without overtime pay or any form of remuneration other than their salary. Employees are also being denied leave because of the staff shortage. I know of cases where employees do not want to work after hours but are afraid of being victimised and losing their jobs.

Heads of Departments/Supervisors are also not sympathetic to the plight of low-level employees as they themselves are under pressure. They also have further ambitions to hold higher positions and are pressuring the staff under their remit to get the work done to make a case for themselves in the event higher positions become vacant.

Another issue that needs to be addressed is that over time new tasks are assigned to an employee that are not explicitly stated on their job descriptions. While most job descriptions have ‘Other duties as assigned’ stated on them, this is not being used as it should and there is a great disparity between the work being done and the remuneration received for that work in the public service. Ideally, job descriptions should be reviewed every 1-3 years. I have worked in various positions and I have never seen this done for any job I have held.

Public servants are tasked this year with executing the largest budget in the history of the country. As is usually the case, the last months of the year are the busiest. Given the current situation, I do not know how much worse it can get but I know many public servants do not plan to stick around to find out.

I would like to close by saying that the least a public servant should expect is to be paid for the work they do but that is far from the case.  Because of the high turnover, they are performing the functions of multiple staff and working longer hours for the same salary. As the busy season approaches, I am appealing for the government to pay public servants the overtime that they work or at least put in place mechanisms that would alleviate the need to work overtime while ensuring those who do not want to work overtime are not discriminated against. I have read Minister Parag’s vision for the public service and I hope it is realised. But until then urgent action is needed to address the issues public servants face.

Yours truly,
Vishal Singh

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