Civil Servants Transferred To Local Government Service

About 33,000 civil servants are to be transferred to the new Local Government Service that President John Agyekum Kufuor would launch next month as part of the on-going reforms of the country's public service.
 

With the coming into operation of the new Local Government Service, only about 8,000 personnel would be retained within the Civil Service aimed at ensuring a lean but efficient and strategically focused Civil Service.
 

This was made known when heads of departments in the Upper West Region were yesterday briefed on the new local government service by Mr Joe Donkor Issachar, Head of the Civil Service, and Nana Boachie Danquah, Chairman of the Local Government Service Council.
 

Nana Boachie Danquah said when the service practically takes off, some 10 departments with their headquarters in Accra would cease to exist at Accra level.
     

Those departments would be expected to operate at the regional levels under the regional co-ordinating councils for effective planning and implementation of the developmental programmes of the various regions. He also allayed the fears of officers of loss in jobs as a result of the coming into effect of the new local government service.
   

He said the creation of 28 new district assemblies recently requires the employment of more officers to man the districts.
     

Nana Boachie Danquah named some of the departments that would cease to exist at national headquarters level as Department of Agriculture, Town and Country Planning Department, Births and Deaths Department, Regional Works Department and Office of the Regional Co-ordinating Council.
 

The rest are the Department of Parks and Gardens, Department of Co-operatives, Department of Social Welfare and Department of Community Development.
 

Nana Boachie Danquah appealed to the government to have the political courage to implement the fiscal decentralization aspect of the reform to ensure the maximum success of the new local government service.