EFFECTIVE April 1, 2006, Alwin Hales, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Transport and Works, as well as some other permanent secretaries will be asked to assume responsibility for managing the financial resources of their respective ministries.

“It is expected at that time that from the application of the ministry’s recurring budget, to the appointment and establishment of the staff complement (this) would be managed at the ministry level by the permanent secretary, for certain levels of staff,” Hales told JIS News.

Hales pointed out that under this new system, some of the work currently being done by the Establishment Division in the Ministry of Finance and Planning will be delegated to the permanent secretary.

“So we would set staff levels and within a broadband. And we would set salary levels, and hopefully it will put us in a better position to attract the quality of staff members that are required on an ongoing basis to keep us up to date and to make us able to cope with delivery of service in the global environment,” he explained.

Hales said, however, that the new provisions would not be implemented without constraints.

“There will be constraints on the bottom-line of the budget, and there will be constraints as far as government regulations and guidelines are concerned,” he stated.

According to Hales, this latest proposal is another aspect of the public sector modernisation process whereby government is seeking to improve the way its agencies and entities dispense their services, simultaneously reducing central control and delegating authority to permanent secretaries by utilising the principles of the Public Sector Modernisation Programme (PSMP).

In the Ministry of Transport and Works and many other ministries, the process of delegating more responsibilities to the permanent secretary started in December 2004 when they were charged with responsibility for some human resource functions.

“In some ministries, and in our ministry in particular, the permanent secretary has delegated authority to hire, authority for appointment, authority for dismissal and authority for disciplining and training staff,” Dr Hales said.

This power, he added, “demystifies the whole human resource management process to staff members” and as a result, the ministry functions better.

Sharon Callen, Organisational Specialist in the Cabinet Office, explained that the intention was to “increase delegation of human resources functions to permanent secretaries, to include responsibility and authority to classify positions within a very well-defined framework.”

“The hope is to delegate classification of positions as well as changes in remuneration and compensation within this framework,” Callen told JIS News.

The Cabinet Office in collaboration with the Public Services Commission, the Ministry of Finance and Planning as well as a number of other entities is currently developing this framework, she added.