AROUND 5 000 VACANT GOVT POSTS, E300M NEEDED

MBABANE – “There is no money”!

These were the words of the Ministry of Public Service, Principal Secretary (PS) Sipho Tsabedze when he appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) recently. If his words are anything to go by, then it is safe to conclude that while it was good news when the hiring freeze implemented as a cost-cutting measure by government was lifted two years ago, affording the filling up of vacant posts might take some time as the process is seemingly too costly. Information gathered by this publication is to the effect that there are around 5 000 vacant posts in the different government ministries and in order to fill them up, in particular the crucial ones, government needs at least E300 million. These figures, it has been gathered, is what was reportedly presented to the Planning and Budgeting Committee (PBC), which is formed by the ministries of Finance, Economic Planning and Public Service.

The figures are said to have formed part of the request by the Public Service in its quest to have the vacant ministries filled. The PBC had the responsibility of scrutinising the request but due to cash flow challenges, the budget eventually granted was far less than what the Public Service had requested. The PS opened up about the budgetary constraints when addressing an audit query, which was raised by the Auditor General (AG) Timothy Matsebula’s in his report for the financial year ended March 31, 2023. The query was that there was money that was allocated for personnel costs in government, but was never utilised despite that almost all ministries were on record having said that their operations were suffering due to posts that had remained unfilled.

Costs

The AG had noted a red flag in terms of personnel costs and reported that he reported that there was an significant under-expenditure on personnel costs amounting to E2 702 436.90 incurred under the responsibility centre 2 103 staffing requirements and complement controls. The AG had highlighted in his report that under-expenditures of 10 per cent or more in a year may not be conducive to the development of the country. Matsebula said he was concerned that planned programmes might have not been accomplished, leading to lesser service delivery thereby limiting improvements in the public service and lives of citizens. He said this reflected inadequate budget planning, execution and performance. Matsebula had also mentioned in the report that he advised the controlling officer (PS) to ensure that released funds were utilised for intended purposes and not to seek budget release when not ready to implement.

“I further advised the controlling officer to provide reasons for the under-expenditures and explain if the budget’s intended purposes were met, despite the under-expenditures. In response, the controlling officer concurred with my observation and stated that the under-expenditure was caused by posts that remained vacant due to hiring freeze effected through Establishment Circular 3 of 2018,” reads part of the AG’s report. Elaborating, Matsebula had said that the controlling officer’s response and explanation was acknowledged; however, it was not satisfactory because the ministry made the budget request knowing about the freeze hence funds that could have been utilised fruitfully elsewhere remained locked up.  “It is, therefore, apparent that the funds’ intended purpose was not met which is a major concern,” the AG said.

In his response, the PS came out to state that in fact, the budget was there on paper but that it did not come physically. He highlighted that the issue was serious but that not even the Finance ministry could be blamed as the cash flow challenge affected the whole country. This publication has gathered that the ministry had requested the around E300 million for the currently financial year but eventually received E65 million. The E65 million, according to our calculations, can only cover filling up vacant posts for the Ministry of Health alone. The hiring freeze came about when government issued Circular Number 3/2018 which read, “principal secretaries and heads of departments are hereby informed that Cabinet has directed that all vacant posts including creation of new posts and promotions across government be frozen. This state of affairs has been necessitated by the current financial situation in the country and the cash-flow problems faced by government.”  

Effective

The circular was dated July 31, 2018, and its effective date was August 1, 2018. Worth noting is with the ongoing PAC sessions, most ministries have come out to reveal how their departments were understaffed. Last week, the Ministry of Agriculture revealed that it had over 700 vacant posts that had crippled service delivery, among other challenges. The figures were disclosed by the Principal Secretary, Sydney Simelane who said the hiring freeze had crippled their service delivery, because retired and deceased officers had not been replaced since 2018, when the circular was introduced. The PS lamented that they were a big ministry and desperately needed officers. Currently, we have more than 700 vacancies, which have affected our service delivery,” he said.

During the session, the Deputy Chairperson of the PAC Manzi Zwane, who is also the Chairman of the House of Assembly Public Service Portfolio Committee, said he was worried about the number of vacancies in the ministry.  He asked the PS if he submitted the vacancies to the Ministry of Public Service, which is responsible for hiring civil servants. The human resources officer, in response, told the MPs that despite the Ministry of Public Service issuing a circular that stated that the hiring freeze had been lifted, the situation on the ground had not changed. The officers highlighted that before the circular, officers had to ask for a waiver from Cabinet. It was stated that the difference was that the waiver had to be requested at the public service Ministry and posts would be issued based on the available budget. The officers said even before this circular, posts were issued based on the available budget.

The controlling officer also told the PAC that for that financial year, he had asked for 60 posts for extension officers, but he was granted only four. On Thursday, PS in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security Makhosini Mndawe was put on the spot regarding the hiring freeze. Mndawe, as reported by our sister publication, the Times of Eswatini, was asked to explain the status of the hiring freeze and whether it was in force or not. In response, Mndawe made it known that it was a tricky question but that the hiring freeze had slightly been relaxed than before. He said it was not completely frozen, but was still there and he supported his assertions by explaining that there were still difficulties in filling vacant posts.

It should be noted that three years after implementing the hiring freeze, it was uncovered that the decision had earned the country substantial savings, however, doubts emerged on the quality of service delivery and alleged underhand employment tactics. It was stated that six month after the hiring freeze was introduced, government said it had saved E30 million in wage bill, which implies that three and a half years later, the state has saved over E200 million. A rough estimate found that at least 3 000 more public servants could have been employed had it not been for the hiring freeze. The number was derived from government ministries quarterly reports as well as open declarations by some ministries.

Recruit

The Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS), which had embarked on a process to recruit just about 300 officers has, in fact said it needed 1 000 officers to be able to effectively carry out its crime-solving mandate at the time. Motivating this, the REPS said during the uprising protests, police officers were overstretched and unable to cover all the strategic points. At around the same time, the Judiciary told the PAC that it required as much as 354 workers that included judges, magistrates, registrars and clerks. The judiciary attributed the backlog in cases to staff shortages. The hiring freeze was said to be in tandem with the World Bank’s advice to trim the size of the public service and reap the benefits of a reduced wage bill. To achieve this, government came up with a voluntary early retirement plan which was to see public servant taking up packages and retiring at the early age of 48. However, this was not achieved because government lacked the money for the packages of the workers who wanted to retire.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: