Govt has 9,500 vacancies
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Thursday May 21, 2015 18:03
There are 9,500 vacancies across government departments in the public service, members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) heard yesterday.
The Director of Public Service Management (DPSM) Ruth Maphorisa was addressing the committee and stated that some departments are currently recruiting to fill the vacant positions. “The bulk of these posts are at the Ministry of Health (MOH) followed by Ministry of Education and Skills Development ((MoESD). Some of these posts at Health Ministry are difficult to fill. There are certain medical specialists that the ministry is looking for. Some posts are for the medical school and there will be filled as soon as the project is over,” Maphorisa said.
She said MOH has 3,344 vacancies, most of which are for medical school under the University of Botswana, while others are for specialised fields.
Maphorisa said some of these specialists that they need could only be found outside the country.
She said the MoESD has 1,636 vacancies and consultation is still ongoing on whether to fill them or not. The rest of the vacancies are for different ministries across government. On other issues, Maphorisa said they have tracked down 61 people they have been paying while they were no longer employed in the public service.
“We have paid these ghost employees over P10 million and we are trying to recover our money for those that we can locate. Some of these people were either appearing twice on the payroll and some had long left the public service. Most of these ghost employees were at MOH, Agriculture and MoESD,” she said. She said at MOH, they had paid 19 ghost workers, Agriculture 18 and MoESD 17. She said different ministries are trying to cross check their database to avoid paying ghost employees. This was after Selebi Phikwe West MP Dithapelo Keorapetse wanted to know if DPSM is doing something to avoid paying ghost employees.
The DPSM director further said her department would be undergoing restructuring soon in order to unearth employees capable of helping in policies and other issues.