Secretary for human resource development and management Sam Madula says Malawi Government will no longer promote any employee without performance appraisals from July 2013, as one way of restoring discipline and integrity in the civil service.
Mandula disclosed this during a press conference at Civo Stadium on Sunday which was organised as part of the activities commemorating the Africa Public Service Day.
During the celebrations, government also launched the Malawi Public Service Charter and the Code of Conduct and Ethics for the Malawi Public Service.
Said Madula: “Since 1964 the appraisal system in government was closed but now we want to change that and put in place an open system which each ministry will agree on. From now onwards all promotions without appraisals will never happen in the civil service.”
All government employees will have to work closely with their supervisors to make sure that they are rightly appraised, he said.
He also disclosed that government has put in place a grievance handling system to make sure that no one feels victimised.
Principal secretary for Public Sector Reform Management Luckie Sikwese said open assessments will transform the civil service and encouraged seniors to inform their subordinates on the assessment procedures.
“What used to happen before was that some seniors could appraise their juniors even without telling them how they have scored and this was not a good practice,” said Sikwese.
On the perceived poor image that the civil service, Madula said it is possible to transform it for the better, if only all civil servants at every level begin to work towards the agenda of committing themselves to the demands of an ethical and productive workforce.
“The purpose of our public service is to deliver excellent public services to citizens, programmes that improve the quality of life of the majority of the people and ensuring that the national development agenda of this country is achieved,” he said.
Some of the programmes launched are on the improvement of effective performance and accountablility, whereby all departments and agencies will be required to have well articulated and signed organisational performance agreements.
The government is also working on the improvement of the welfare of the public servants as well as improving gender equality in the Malawi Public Service.
Goverments objective is to address economic challenges, poor delivery of major social services, improvement of information records management and ICT development and utilisation in the public service.
The Malawi public service consists of the Civil Service, the Judicial Service, Parliamentary Service, the Malawi Defence Force, the Malawi Police Service, Immigration and Prison Services, Prastatals as well as constitutional bodies such as the Law Commission, the Malawi Human Rights Commission, the anti Corruption Bureau and the Ombudsman.
