The number of civil servants has almost doubled since 2002. From 14,265 civil servants in 2002, the number has increased to 26,669, this year, making civil service the single biggest employer in the country.
The alarming growth rate of the civil service goes against Royal Civil Service Commission’s policy of maintaining a small, compact, and efficient civil service.
RCSC attributes the growth to haphazard plans and lack of long-term perspective on recruitment, according to RCSC’s annual report that was published recently.
The report says optimizing the human resources remains a constant challenge with the constitutional obligations placed on the government.
The report says it gets further complicated by systems where there is little accountability for excess recruitment or idle people.
RCSC says the decisions leading to Civil Service growth are not with the RCSC alone.
To check the further growth and determine the right size of the Civil Service, RCSC has conducted the Organizational Development Exercises.
From the exercises, standards have been developed that will be used as a basis for determining human resource requirements.
RCSC has also stopped the recruitment for many positions that are not critical.
