Windhoek
The subsistence and travelling (S&T) bill of the civil service is expected to increase from N$590 million last year to N$760 million during the current financial year.
Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila yesterday expressed alarm over the rising cost of S&T and overtime claims and implored permanent secretaries to help arrest the situation.
Figures contained in the annual Estimates of Revenue, Income and Expenditure indicate that travel claims by civil servants will amount to around N$760 million in the current financial year (2015/16) and N$860 million the following year. The figure stood at N$590 million during the 2013/14 financial year, meaning the country’s 100 000 civil servants would have pocketed around N$2.1 billion in S&T claims between 2013 and 2017.
“Permanent secretaries play an important role in ensuring that these items do not continue to take up too much of the offices, ministries and agencies’ budgets, as this crowds out investment in infrastructure and service delivery,” the PM said during a meeting with permanent secretaries yesterday.
She said some public servants have developed an entitlement syndrome, whereby they feel entitled to go on trips in order to get S&T, while some work overtime but there is no clear outcome therefrom. “Some people even get angry when they do not go on trips,” she noted.
S&T and overtime claims are said to be some of the many ways used by civil servants to milk government of hundreds of millions of dollars yearly, with some officials’ claims even surpassing their monthly salaries.
Despite the concern, the PM said government has identified some measures to be considered to contain the ever-growing overtime and S&T claims. “It will require the support of all offices, ministries and agencies through you, as accounting officers, to make a success of the implementation of these measures,” she said.
“As accounting officers, permanent secretaries should ensure the efficient and effective use of ministerial resources by eliminating wastage, misappropriation and other misuse of public resources, thus ensuring optimal value from public resources.”
She also called on the assembled permanent secretaries to ensure that government property is well taken care of. “Government always has to spend money buying new cars, fuel and repairing official cars, because people abuse the cars,” she said.
In her concluding remarks Kuugongelwa-Amadhila warned permanent secretaries against the continued non-utilisation of allocated resources and urged the accounting officers to pay more attention to the Auditor General’s reports and recommendations.