The public sector’s size is expected to total 120,000 workers or 12 per cent below estimates based on a nearly completed count.

The aim is to reconcile salaries with staff as part of cost cutting measures under the modernisation of the public sector.

“Last week, we reached 112,000 but it could go to 120,000 because we want to make sure we do not miss the casual workers,” stated Citibank country manager Peter Moses speaking in his capacity as a member of Public Sector Transformation Unit geared at cutting government’s wage bill by some two percentage points to 9.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Government didn’t have a singular list tallying its employees but there was a 135,000 estimate prior to the ongoing census Moses noted earlier in his presentation at Accountant’s Forum organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants held last week at Jamaica National in Kingston.

“We are finishing the census and it was like counting things one at a time,” he said explaining that employee data from individual government entities were not computerised but on reels of old green and white paper.

“Then the boxes started to arrive and it was in tons of paper and people sat for weeks and months counting,” Moses recalled.

He cautioned that the process of transforming the public sector isn’t a job cutting exercise but rather one which seeks to save via efficiency measures. Last year Government set-up the Public Sector Transformation Unit headed by Patricia Sinclair McCalla. The unit after some three months sent 130 recommendations to government which included the realignment of ministries; privatisation of government services; movement of government entities from rental space to vacant government owned building; bulk technology purchases; and closure of dormant entities.

“I am confident that we will meet the target and that in three to five years we will (see benefits) but at the end of the day my view is that reforms shouldn’t stop,” he said.

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionality requires Government to reduce the size of the public sector wage bill from 11.75 per cent of GDP to 9.5 per cent of GDP by 2013/14. The wage bill in nominal terms will rise to $150 billion from $126 billion in 2009/10 fiscal year or 19 per cent higher, which represents a reduction in real terms as inflation is projected to be 29 per cent over the period.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding this month disclosed the he refused IMF recommendations to fire workers, as a condition of the country borrowing US$1.3 billion to shield the effects of the global economic recession. He addressed delegates at the triennial general meeting of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union at the Jamaica Conference Centre.

Golding explained that other recession hurt countries including England and Cuba recently announced massive lay-offs for public sector workers. He reiterated the impact of the closure of three of the country’s bauxite plants which cut the country’s export earnings by 50 per cent and mining employment by the same.