Pretoria - Public Service and Administration Minister Roy Padayachie has undertaken to speed up the setting up of a centralised mechanism structure to better manage and coordinate disciplinary cases across government departments.
This was one of the recommendations made by the Public Service Commission in its report released last year.
According to department, the main role of the centralized disciplinary structure will be to assist departments with investigative work as well as prosecutorial and adjudication functions for all outstanding cases.
To this effect, the minister stressed that while the department is currently reviewing the disciplinary code and procedures to address the problems which render the system inefficient, it was vital for all government departments to adhere to the timelines and ensure that precautionary suspensions of public servants should only be in effect for 60 days and thereafter disciplinary processes should commence with employees at work.
Disciplinary cases should also be conducted and concluded within a period of six months.
The department has set up a national Labour Relations Management Forum to improve the capacity and skills for amongst others, investigative, prosecutorial and adjudication functions of Labour Relations Officials across the public service.
The department said in 2010/11, the total number of employees on precautionary suspension was 356 and at least 201 cases were finalised with 176 cases decided in favour of the employer and 25 against.
In the Senior Management Service (SMS) of the Public Service, 216 members were charged with misconduct during 2010/11 and 183 of the cases were finalised with 165 cases decided in favour of the employer.
"The minister wishes to reiterate government's commitment to implement an effective and efficient public service that ensures that public servants are appropriately skilled to render services to citizens with excellence," said the department.
The department has adopted Five Strategic Focus Areas that seek to improve internal efficiency of the public service, strengthen access to service delivery to citizens, implement the turn-around strategy of the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), accelerate training and development of a Public Service Cadre and the repositioning of PALAMA into a School of Government and to fight corruption in the public service.
Padayachie said: "In addition to the Five Strategic Focus Areas, we have decided to roll out four campaign programmes that will include instilling ethos of public service aimed at inculcating a new culture of responsiveness, dedication and patriotic commitment in the minds of public servants as part of a strategy of building a public service cadre."
