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In a bid to strengthening public service delivery, the Human Resource Management Office, HRMO under the European Union support to the Governance sector in Sierra Leone, is spearheading the nation-wide consultative meetings with civil servants on the Review of the Civil Service Code, Regulations and Rules.

Addressing permanent secretaries and professional heads recently at a one-day consultative meeting on the Review of the Civil Service Code at the Civil Service Training College in Freetown, the Director General of HRMO and Imprest Administrator of EU, MAPE, Ansu Samuel Tucker informed his colleagues that HRMO together with its strategic partners;  PSC and Cabinet Secretariat, had completed consultative meetings with civil servants working in the 14 districts in the regions, including Bonthe Island, to elicit their views.

He said the review of the Civil Service Code is a significant milestone in our National Development Agenda as articulated in sub-cluster 4.7 of the Medium-Term National Development Plan 2019-1023, which identifies “Strengthening Public Service Delivery, " as one of the priority areas and set the following targets:

1, By 2023, the Public Service Bill shall be enacted, the Civil Service Code shall be fully reviewed and the Public Service Regulation, 1982 shall be reviewed, modified and published.

2. By 2023, the process of personnel recruitment to retirement shall be automated by 80%, moving from the manual system.

Mr. Tucker said the EU under the 11th European Development Fund entered into a financing agreement with the Government of Sierra Leone to support the governance sector (Civil Service, Parliament, Civil Registration and electoral Reforms)

He said the objective of the Civil Service Reform is to improve on the institutional and human capacities, as well as the financial resources of the civil service for effective and efficient service delivery. 

The Director General said the Civil Service Code which came to effect in 2011, replaced the General Order of the civil service, makes provision to review the code after every five years but was never reviewed due to the Ebola outbreak in the country. He stated that the government undertook the first ever review exercise on the code with a nation-wide consultative meetings early last year.

Mr. Tucker noted that a number of lacunae have been identified in the code and a lot of emerging issues bordering on governance and the new public management paradigm, makes it compelling to review the code and improve its relevance; hence the review process considers emerging issues like gender, disability, occupational safety and health, whistle blowing, conflict of interest and provincial administration.

The Head of the European Union Mission in Sierra Leone, Manuel Muller, said the EU supported the Government of Sierra Leone to actualize its objective of right-sizing, rationalization, professionalization of the civil service by developing the institutional and human capacities for policy formulation and implementation to ensure effective delivery of the public service.

This is the last consultative meeting on the review of the Civil Service Code and this will be followed with a nation-wide validation exercise, subsequently to cabinet for approval.