Author: Denyse Ealedona

Sixteen new officers have joined the department this year and few others last year taking up positions under short term contracts and on probationary positions within a number of wings and branches in the department.

HR Manager Lucy Kasu said, the new staff have come on board to fill critical positions within various branches.

She said, the need to fill these positions is imminent as supervisors require manpower in their respective branches and wings. The new officers included 5 females and 8 male on short term contracts and  probationary appointments.

The officers will take up positions in Housing, GESI, HR , Policy , MIS and the Southern Directorate. One of the officers is a transfer from Fire Service.

Mrs Kasu said, the officers will definitely ease the need for manpower within respective branches and wings and we hope this will help boost the work output this year. “The department has to deliver on Secretary’s KRA and the boost in manpower will certainly ensure this happens,

Final Year Journalism students Matilda Ginio and  Esther Gahane said  they felt very privileged to have been engaged in their internship with Department of Personnel Management.

The girls who did 13 weeks of Public Relations practice with the Public Service Information Centre branch in the Secretary’s Office said they completely enjoyed their work experience with and learnt so much during their time at DPM.

“We feel that we are lucky to have been accepted to come and do our internship here at DPM”, said Esther. 

Both girls expressed gratitude to Secretary Ms Taies Sansan for giving them the approval to come and do their internship with the Department.

“I think both of us are lucky that we came here because we gained good experience from the 13 weeks that we were here at DPM and for that we are so grateful”, said Matilda.

The students who are final year students are expected to get their final credit points from the internship with DPM and will graduate in April this year.

Both of them have commenced employment with television station EMTV and we wish them all the best in their future careers.

An internal Housing Committee has been set up to coordinate and oversee the DPM Internal staff home ownership scheme and advise the Executive Management on home ownership strategies relating to the Housing program at Duran farm. 

The Housing Committee made up of 12 staff from various wings convened its first meeting on the 16^th of February to start the ball rolling.

Among other responsibilities of the Housing Committee is to ensure submission of reports and briefs to Secretary, provide timely advise to EMT on the home ownership scheme.

The Committee’s first meeting chaired by chairperson of the Committee and Executive Manager Public Service Housing Ms. Nancy Levi was given an update on the Duran Farm project. 

In providing an update to the Committee Mrs. Levi said, DPM will be signing an Memorandum of Understanding with NHC soon on the 100 allotments for DPM staff.

She said, a number of issues will have to be resolved prior to the signing of the MOU. 

Terms of reference for the Committee is being drafted and a work plan for the committee members is also being put together. The Committee will be doing a site visit of the allotments for DPM.

The committee will be meeting bi monthly to progress all its responsibilities as per its work plan.

The WoG Gender Equity & Social Inclusion (GESI) team has completed 2 weeks of GESI sensitization and mainstreaming training for managers and senior Immigration officers at APEC HAUS from the 1st -10^th February.

This consisted of four batches with 20 officers in each batch. Senior GESI officer Ms. Amelia Raka said, they decided to conduct the sensitization program to run parallel with consultation of participants

“It gave us the opportunity to also consult the participants that came from Immigration & Citizenship Authority on their workplace policies that was the internal GESI mainstream policy, their gender base violence and sexual harassment workplace policy and the health and well being workplace policy.

The outcome of these policies will be incorporated into three draft plans which will then be submitted to the Senior Management Team for approval and endorsement by the Chief Migration Officer.

Once that is done, then the three policies will be launched for ICA so the rationale behind conducting consultation with the staff on the three policies was basically to do a hands on practical on how the GESI principles on values are used to be mainstreamed into the different business processes they have and that is policy drafting, said Ms Raka.

Ms. Raka also said, that a code of conduct is now under review and it was all the more reason for the consultations to be done. The review of ICA code of conduct will incorporate the GESI principles and values, values of respect, responsibility, accountability, wisdom, understanding and honesty and of course equitability inclusiveness and reasonable accommodation.

Sensitizing the officers but also equipping them with hands on experience on how they can mainstream the values of GESI and the principles of GESI into their everyday business processes.

DPM has commenced the retirement exercise for public servants who have reached the compulsory retirement age of 65 or wish to retire on medical grounds.

This follows the allocation of K200m for the retirement exercise for the year 2022 in the national budget. Director National Agencies Ms. Roselyn Wrakuavia in an interview has confirmed that the government has allocated k200 million for the Public Service retrenchment exercises this year.

Director Wrakuavia said, they have commenced by conducting a desktop audit to ascertain those who have reached 64 last year.

Ms. Wrakuavia said, we will be doing this by sector and region. “For national agencies, we have 87 agencies and we have already prepared for those are 64 and 63 years old this year.

In this first quarter our plans as we usually do, is to write advise letters to agencies and we ask them to provide and confirm with us their list that we have extracted from the payroll.

For those who already assumed that they will be 65 years because last year they were 64, we are write to their respective agency heads to confirm their date of births.

“In those advice letters we will seek advice from agency heads who wish to retiree their officers and also advise them of the next steps.

This will enable us to provide advise by giving them notices as the per General Order and for them to provide feedback to us by preparing their preliminary calculations on the required forms and that’s where the retirement exercise starts.

From there we will know exactly by the end of first quarter, how many affected officers we have by region and by sector.

And then we give an aggregate cost to Treasury to advise them on the number of staff who will be 65 years this year and intending to retiree”.

She also highlighted that because of limited funding they prioritize retirement where they start from the oldest to 65 but the oldest they claim that they are still young and all that and then we are looking for those who are ready and excited and wants to go because they have other exit plans in life.

We want to commence with information session first, after seeing the list we are doing our activity plans now and will go out to agencies to provide information sessions prior to the actual exercise”.

Ms. Wrakuavia further added that information is important and that the retirees  have to be oriented or inducted so we have to do that. She said, every agency sector should come up their work plans.

“I have my work plan that we are preparing and I directed my officers to work on that to start targeting agencies with the highest numbers and especially those that are already 65 plus or 63 and up so that is our target.

Agencies need proper information on calculations and that is our work plan for quarter one which is to complete information sessions and start talking to retirees. We have to prepare them psychologically”, she said.

In this article we share with you all the life of a former senior DPM staff who served the department for 31 years before becoming the Secretary of Department of Labour & Industrial Relations.

The late Mr. Ravia Vagi’s life was celebrated at his funeral service which was well attended by departmental heads, staff from the Department of Labour & Industrial Relations, DPM and other senior citizens, family and friends who took time to pay their respects.

It was a moving funeral service fitting for someone described as having inherent qualities of humility, humbleness, intelligence and wisdom. Minister for Labour & Industrial Relations Hon. Tomait Kapili and the member for Rigo Hon. Lekwa Gure were among Departmental heads and dignitaries who attended the funeral of late Mr. Vagi.

The late Mr. Vagi who was the Secretary for Department of Labour & Industrial Relations at the time of his passing served the Public Service for 39 years when he succumbed to illness on the 27^th of January.

In paying tribute to Mr. Vagi, Secretary Ms. Taies Sansan described him as a very professional person.

“The late Mr. Vagi was a servant of the people whose professionalism and astute character propelled him to the top. His distinguished career in the public service spanned over 39 years of which 31 was with DPM making him a very experienced public servant.

His eldest daughter Lorraine who delivered her late fathers eulogy spoke of a family man and a man who was wholly dedicated to his job.

The Executive Director of Independent Fellowship Scheme Board of Trustees Ms. Florence Willy described him as a true public servant who served the country with distinction.

The late Mr. Vagi was taken to his home village Paramana in Central Province to be laid to rest. In this article we share with you all the life of a former senior DPM staff who served the department for 31 years before becoming the Secretary of Department of Labour & Industrial Relations.

The late Mr Ravau Vagi’s life was celebrated at his funeral service which was well attended by departmental heads, staff from the Department of Labour & Industrial Relations, DPM and other senior citizens, family and friends who took time to pay their respects.

It was a moving funeral service fitting for someone described as having inherent qualities of humility, humbleness, intelligence and wisdom. Minister for Labour & Industrial Relations Hon. Tomait Kapili and the member for Rigo Hon. Lekwa Gure were among Departmental heads and dignitaries who attended the funeral of late Mr Vagi.

The late Mr Vagi who was the Secretary for Department of Labour & Industrial Relations at the time of his passing served the Public Service for 39 years when he succumbed to illness on the 27^th of January.

In paying tribute to Mr Vagi, Secretary Ms. Taies Sansan described him as a very professional person.

“The late Mr. Vagi was a servant of the people whose professionalism and astute character propelled him to the top. His distinguished career in the public service spanned over 39 years of which 31 was with DPM making him a very experienced public servant. His eldest daughter Lorraine who delivered her late fathers eulogy spoke of a family man and a man who was wholly dedicated to his job.

The Executive Director of Independent Fellowship Scheme Board of Trustees Ms. Florence Willy described him as a true public servant who served the country with distinction. The late Mr Vagi was taken to his home village Paramana in Central Province to be laid to rest. village Paramana in Central Province to be laid to rest.

By Journalism student

Esther Gahane

A National Taskforce team has been set up to look into the 29 resolutions agreed upon during the Public Service Reforms and Cost Control Workshop held in October 2020.

The task force comprises of 6 Departmental Heads and chaired by Acting Deputy Secretary Policy & Reforms Mr. Ellison Kalimet on behalf of Secretary Ms. Taies Sansan.

Mr. Kalimet informed the task force that the meeting was an introductory one for members to familiarize themselves on what they are responsible for in terms of implementing the 29 resolutions.

“We were supposed to commence the implementation of the 29 resolutions last year but due to Covid-19 and also funding was to be released by department of Treasury to be allocated to the National secretary to facilitate the meetings for the National Task Force team was released to date by department of treasury so that’s why the National Task force team did not hold any meetings last year.”

Mr. Kalimet said, the first meeting would be an opportunity for the Task Force members to go through and note the 29. He reiterated, the 29 resolutions are not only the responsibility of DPM but also requires the involvement of other key agencies and that is why other departments have been invited to be part of the National Task Force team to implement the 29 resolutions. “DPM is progressing some of these 29 resolutions that falls under our mandated responsibilities.

We have reported back on them but only on those that involve other key stake holders, we have to capture them in our MAP so that we can have it implemented and report back to the Task Force”.

The task force team were given the terms of membership & terms of reference, communication protocols & principles and the guiding principles for the Task Force during the first meeting held on the 3^rd of February.

Secretary for Education Dry Uke Komura said, there are 29 resolutions and for them to implement all of them would be a mammoth task so he suggested that they prioritize the 29 resolutions and identify and prioritize them in terms of importance.

Dr Kombra also highlighted that there are some resolutions that require funding so they need to identify where the cost will be coming from and the need to have a budget for those resolutions.

Secretary for Information and Communication Technology Mr. Russell Yoruba said, currently under the Digital transformation policy, the department is digitizing as a Whole of Government approach and they want to start with DPM on the three resolutions that capture ICT issues.

Mr. Woruba said, they have already included them in their work plans and budget and have started their internal planning engaging with stake holders.

Mr. Kaliment concluded that they have taken note of all the comments and they will raise it with the chairperson in the next Taskforce team.