Pretoria - Minister of Public Service and Administration Richard Baloyi says the time has come for the creation of a new breed of public servants who will take service delivery to the next level.
As part of ensuring that public servants are effective, government plans to introduce a national integrated public sector training system that will cover all spheres.
Baloyi, who was speaking on Tuesday ahead of his Budget Vote, said special intervention to the current regulatory framework will be implemented to improve practices in relation to recruitment, appointment and career management.
Special focus, he said, would be placed on improving both the quality of appointments and the time it takes to fill vacant posts.
"We will now use a fishing rod instead of fishing net -so that we pick the right people who qualify for the jobs."
The budget, which will be tabled on Wednesday, would also focus on the accomplishments and obstacles to service delivery. He said one of the major obstacles was that of corruption.
To ensure that South Africa had a successful and responsive public service, public servants had to be committed, the minister said, and willing to play according to the rules. He said public servants with interests in private companies had to declare them in an effort to stamp out corruption.
Another area of interest that Baloyi would focus on will be the debate on a single public service.
He said he would be sharing with the nation as to "how do we move forward" with regards to the implementation of the OSD.
Baloyi was also confident that wage negotiations in the public sector will be concluded as soon as possible.
He called on parties to restrain from taking the negotiations to the streets.
"We don't want to see a prolonged period of negotiation. Anyone who is party to these negotiations should know that they are either ready or not."
The minister said that while many jumped to the conclusion that the period of negotiation were a time of "antagonistic engagements", government was convinced that it had put together plans to ensure a smooth process.
He said while there were still a few issues that needed to be ironed out at the Public Service Bargaining Council, government was moving with speed to finalise matters.
"I'm confident we will be able to resolve a number of those issues. We are going to try and move with speed."
Another issue he said he would address was government's 2 % target for people with disabilities to be employed in the public service.
