26 February 2008
Maputo — Mozambique's Minister for the Public Service, Victoria Diogo urged on Monday the permanent secretaries of state bodies to ensure that 2008 is a year when concrete results are produced in transforming the state apparatus to respond to the challenges of national development.
Speaking at a meeting in Maputo with the permanent secretaries, she said that civil servants should feel and bear witness to changes that improve living conditions and the working environment, and that citizens should find in public institutions a speedy and correct response to their concerns.
Diogo's exhortation arose comes from the fact that in 2007 she had found poorly organised staff files in some of the public administration, and also delays in processing paper work on retirement, on the issuing of identification documents, and on transferring staff to the districts.
She stressed that solving these problems will contribute to the strengthening and consolidation of the public administration. Diogo wanted to see a modernized civil service, which could act as a motor for development.
"We recorded progress in 2007, but we also ran up against constraints", said Diogo. "2008 must be a year of concrete results in transforming our state apparatus".
She stressed that significant results were attained in 2007 in restructuring of the state organs at central and local levels, and there were improvements in the rendering of services in public institutions in general. She also regarded the census of all public servants throughout the country as a great success.
The census counted 162,424 state workers (mostly in the education and health services), and allocated 114,510 Single Tax Identification Numbers (NUIT). Which means that the great majority of public servants did not previously have the supposedly compulsory tax number, even though income tax was being deducted from their wages.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
