The Office of the President and Cabinet has organised a two day induction workshop for newly appointed or reassigned permanent secretaries and other senior government officials to equip them to be effective in discharging their mandate and to be able to transform the country’s economy in line with the President’s vision of attaining a middle income status by 2030.
The burden of effective implementation of policies and programmes rests on the civil service and to that end, a two day induction workshop for permanent secretaries, principal directors and other senior government officials was organised.
Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Dr Misheck Sibanda who was flanked by his two deputies Mr Justin Mupamhanga and Mr George Charamba, outlined the roadmap to the heads of ministries stressing on the importance of improved administration in terms of staff dedication to duty, efficiency, transparency and accountability.
As administrative heads, policy advisors and accounting officers in their respective ministries, permanent secretaries’ roles are associated with a lot of challenges especially in this era of competing demands.
“There is also need to create a platform to identify basic challenges in budget processes, policy development, implementation of reforms and judicious accountability in public expenditure,” stressed the Chief Secretary.
Public Service Commission deputy chairperson Ambassador Margaret Muchada discouraged all forms of inflexibility saying the government is pushing for computerisation to achieve online decision making and promptness in the discharge of government business.
As part of the training, the permanent secretaries will be taken through key elements of vision 2030, strategies on how to implement and identify quick win projects using the integrated results based management system, the 100 days cycle as well as ethical conduct among other skills.
Some of the permanent secretaries were already in government, while others have been drawn from the academia and the diaspora.
They were reminded of the need for focused work to ensure the attainment of vision 2030 and increased productivity in the public sector cannot be overemphasized.
Dr Misheck Sibanda said permanent secretaries that have been retired, having reached the mandatory retirement age limit, after proffering illustrious and dedicated service to the nation whose skills are still required to assist in state enterprises and parastatals reform programme either as board members or senior management will be considered.
