The positions of 5400 civil servants could be cut in the new year after parliament’s budget review committee revealed that Rf119 million has been earmarked for redundancy packages.
Furthermore, a letter from the Civil Service Commission (CSC) to the speaker of parliament tabled on 7 Dec disclosed that 228 staff have already been dismissed while 387 have been served notice, according to independent MP Mohamed Nasheed.
Abdul Muhsin, vice president of the CSC, said the government had yet to consult with the commission regarding the redundancies for which it had apparently budgeted.
“The moment we heard of this from the parliamentary committee we wrote to the Finance Ministry for more details,” he said. “If the government are making redundancies, they have to work with the independent commission.”
The government is legally obliged to dismiss civil servants through the commission, explained Nasheed, a safeguard to ensure an independent bureaucracy by reducing the government’s control over civil service employment by offering tenure and certainty of employment.
“Under the Civil Servant Act section 47(c) there are seven specific guidelines under which a civil service employee may be dismissed, and none of these grounds have anything to do with redundancy,” he said. “The government currently isn’t empowered to dismiss so many people in the name of downsizing. The concept of redundancy is new to the Maldives – it has never been envisioned in our country.
This meant, he said, that if the government was planning to restructure and streamline the civil service, “then it must be done through legislation, and not administration.”
“Maybe there are reasons to restructure,” he said. “But if I’m a civil servant and I’m to be dismissed, I want to at least have the basic certainty that it is because of the new rules and not because of my political beliefs or which party I’m in.”