In her speech, the Volta Regional minister commended the initiative by the Local Government Service in getting Coordinating Directors to sign performance contracts as it will inspire and challenge public servants to live up to the expectation in the delivery of their mandate.
She further encouraged assemblies to continue using performance contracting as a tool for monitoring and improving performance.
The minister also stated that everyone present represents the new face of the public service and for that matter there is the need to work hard to change the negative perceptions of society about the roles of the assemblies in the country.
She added that the new image of the public service is targeted at achieving the “transformational Agenda” of His Excellency John Dramani Mahama.
She finally urged MDCEs and their coordinating directors to work as a team in order to attain all the goals and objectives outlined in their contracts by the close of the contract period.
In his address the Head of Service – Dr. Callistus Mahama stated that every public service in ghana has a specific mandate since they were established by law. Many functions have been devolved to the local authorities to respond to the needs of the citizens and as the years go by, more functions are being devolved to the local authorities.
There is the need to put in place an effective mechanism or a monitoring system to first of all monitor staff and secondly give feedback to staff on their performance to facilitate the overall performance of the assemblies.
He observed that one of the depressing features of the public service is that staff are not given enough feedback on their performance yet they are quick to be appraised.This performance management system would however give feedback to the staff.
Again, he said that in order to get a performance management system to be successful at the district level, there is the need to get the buy in of the Chief Executive ,the political head of the district and the coordinating director, the head of the bureaucrats in the district. Therefore the contract was designed to get the two actors involved in the process of achieving the set targets.
He outlined the six thematic areas of the performance contract as follows :
1. Identifying local needs of the district
2. Performance reporting
3.human resource management
4.implementation of the annual action plan and financial management
5 . customer service initiatives
6. Work environment and other cross cutting issues.
The Head of Service stressed on the need for the establishment of client service units in the assemblies so citizens can channel their concerns.
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