New mechanism formulated to train government employees: Ishrat

The government has formulated a new mechanism to address the training needs of public sector employees in a holistic manner, Chairman of National Commission for Government Reforms (NCGR) Dr Ishrat Hussain said.
"The mechanism will help strengthen the institutional infrastructure, expand in-service training opportunities and upgrade the quality of training institutions in the provincial governments particularly for capacity building at the local government level," Dr Ishrat Hussain told APP.
Under the mechanism, some existing institutions would be mandated to design training courses or new institutions such as an engineering academy would be set up for professional in-service training. The officers in various professional careers including accountants, economists, educationists and doctors would be imparted in-service training.
Provincial management academies would be set up for the training of newly inducted generalist officers and in-service grooming of all provincial officers on the lines of the system followed by the federal government.
Incentives would be provided to encourage officers with specialised or professional knowledge to serve as faculty members in various institutions. All training institutions would be autonomous bodies with their own boards of directors chaired either by the minister or secretary of the division or department concerned and consisting of eminent persons.
"These training institutions would also be mandated to develop the capacity for policy research in their respective areas of expertise and thus provide inputs to the ministries in their policy formulation work," Dr Ishrat Hussain said. At present management training for civil servants is done in three forms including pre-service training, in-service training and training abroad.
The Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) recruits 700 specialists or technical persons annually against non-cadre positions in BS-17 and above in different ministries in contrast to 150 officers in the cadre services.
The Board of Governors of NSPP has recently decided introduction of Common Training Programme (CTP) for ex-cadre officers after their initial recruitment by the FPSC.
More than 60 percent officers of the federal government belonging to ex-cadre position do not undergo any training in their career that seriously impairs the capacity in designing and implementing projects and programmes requiring specialist inputs.