By Grace Q. Bryant
The Civil Service Agency (CSA), headed by Josiah F. Joekai, has given a 90-day ultimatum to 40,000 government employees to regularize their status.
The CSA maintained that while it continues to scrutinize and clean up the payroll of government employees, the fate of 40,000 civil servants is said to be hanging in the balance.
The CSA also requested all heads of Government Spending Entities to ensure that employees who were added to the payroll during the period of July 2019 to December 2023, and whose status have not been regularized by the Civil Service Agency, to work with their respective Human Resource Directors to proceed to the Civil Service Agency and have their Personnel Action Notices (PAN) properly processed within a grace period of 90 days, beginning April 2 to June 30, 2024.
The CSA warned that all Human Resource Directors of Spending Entities concerned are to take due note and provide the required documentation to prevent employees affected by this situation from being deleted from the GoL Payroll.
Meanwhile, the CSA boss announced on April 1, the lifting of the freeze on direct replacement.
It can be recalled that on February 16, the Civil Service Agency, under the direction of Alfred Drosaye, then Officer-in-Charge, in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, placed a temporary freeze on select human resource operations.
It said this measure was necessary to maintain order in how Spending Entities move staff around, especially when most entities were yet controlled by Officers-In-Charge.
According to the CSA boss, “We will not lift the entire freeze; we are lifting the freeze only for direct replacement. The freeze on new hires and transfers will be lifted after the Payroll Compliance Audit, which will be conducted shortly by the General Auditing Commission (GAC).
He stressed that the CSA has reached the decision because a significant percentage of GoL Spending Entities has been staffed with the appropriate statutory heads.
“With the exception of the change of employee’s payroll account details, all human resource actions must duly be processed using the appropriate Personnel Action Notices (PAN), as required by Section 35 of the Civil Service Revised Human Resource Policy Manual of September 2014,” he added.
As the Civil Service Agency continues to scrutinize and clean up the payroll of government employees, the fate of 40,000 civil servants is said to be hanging by a thread. Their statuses are said not to have been regularized from 2019 to 2023, and the proper processing of the Personnel Action Notices (PAN) has not been adhered to.
