During the fourth departmental heads meeting, held in Lae, Morobe, Chief Secretary, Isaac Lupari, told the heads of departments gathered that efficiency must be improved in the public service.
The Public sector has become a huge monster in the last forty years, which consumes a third of the national budget as recurrent, nearly K5 billion this year, K300 million is payroll alone.
Having them all at one place is something that Chief Secretary, Isaac Lupari, described as unity within the government departments.
“Many of this heads of departments are policy designers, so we don’t want the policies to be designed in vacuum, we need to understand the realities on the ground,
“Talking about health issues, we need to know what’s happening on the ground, to be able to make that policy intervention, to recommend that policy prescription to the government, to make that decision, even sometimes determining the resource, so public service core function is to implement government policy,” says Lupari.
The aim of the meet is to share and discuss their department’s progress and challenges. They are also improving the way they manage departments.
Though there is progress, a lot still needs to be done in managing departments and saving costs.
There are duplication’s of positions, and the Chief secretary says the public service has become a monster over the last forty years eating nearly 33 percent of the recurrent national budget.
“Its time now, that we need to trim these public servants, because it is consuming so much resource, resources that can be utilised for service delivery. We spent almost one third of the budget on public service, we’re talking about a K12 billion budget.”
“My job is to see where we are and convince my colleagues to move in the right direction,” says Lupari.
There has been a lot of wastage in funding in the public service, but the two days of the meeting will be about what the departments are achieving and the challenges they face.
Today, the National Housing Corporation; the works department; the treasury department; the personal management department; and the transport department did their presentations.
