The Minister of Public Service, Administrative Reforms, Policy Coordination and Delivery, Baboucarr O. Joof on Wednesday met with the Personnel Management Office‘s (PMO) Senior Management Team (SMT).
“I’m here to understand, not here to judge. So that as a team, we can set-up what we have to do. Because I will serve as your spokesperson at the cabinet level. First, I need to know what PMO has- what is in place, what you have, to ensure the task assigned to me by the President on your behalf is understood. Then, we will understand what we have to do. Then the bridge between where we are and what we have to do becomes easy for all of us,” the new Minister stated the purpose of the meeting.
He said the most important resource a country has is its human capital; adding that for the country to develop, the first thing it needs to do is to make sure it has the human capital in place.
‘‘To ensure the human capital has the capacity to execute what we are mandated to do in our institutions and also monitor what is going on across the spectrum from Secretary General to the last worker on the payroll,” he said.
The Minister advised the PMO top officials to be observant of what goes on in the civil service, either by proxies or doing; and urged them to acquaint themselves with the happenings in other ministries and the entire public service.
Minister Joof added: ‘‘This is not at all going to exempt you from your current responsibility of providing a regulatory framework, (and) providing instruments that would make people work. So we will continue to do what you are doing, but we need to move to the next step further, ensure people do what we assign them to do, recruit people, design the job specification, push them, promote them and transfer them.”
He echoed that the PMO is an important part of public service and the engine home for Government.
“We are responsible for making sure everyone is clear about their job description. But not only that, we are also responsible for determining what reward systems are in place, and what people get rewarded with, after doing a good job. As a sector, we need to monitor to know those who are delivering and those who are not. Then start bringing in incentives, whether negative or positive. The sector also needs to start looking at those who deserve to be compensated in the system and compensate them appropriately, then the country will move forward,” stated the Public Service, Administrative Reforms, Policy Coordination and Delivery Minister.
During the meeting, the various directors within the PMO explained to the Honourable Minister the main mandates and responsibilities of their directorates; and assured him of their continuous support at all times.
Source: Lamin B. Darboe, Information Officer, PMO