Marion Edmunds
NATIONAL Public Service Commissioners are hoping to claim hundreds of thousands of rands of financial compensation for early retirement next year, even if they continue to work in the public service.
Forty-four public service commissioners – appointed after 1994 in terms of the interim Constitution – will have to retire early from their positions next year to make way for a new Public Service Commission, which has been shrunk and redesigned by the new Constitution.
The current commissioners are paid at the level of chief director, at an average of R332000 a year, and were employed after the 1994 elections at different times on contracts from between three to six years. Many commissioners will have their contracts broken and will have to be compensated by the government. Those who were last appointed and have worked the shortest time will be compensated the most.
The chair of the Partliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Administration, Salie Manie, said this week government and Parliament were discussing the problem, but that provision would be made for the commissioners.
“They will have the option of being absorbed into the public service, but if they have a contract, the government will have to find a way of saying “good-bye” to them, because we can’t just tell them to pack their bags and go.”
Should the current commissioners, two of whom were appointed last month, be absorbed into the public service, it is unlikely that they will take lower salaries than they are currently earning.
Public service insiders say some commissioners have already secured top jobs elsewhere, in anticipation of taking their lucrative retirement packages and leaving.
Within the public service, minister Zola Skweyiya has come under fire for the late appointment to the commission this year of his special ministerial adviser, John Erntzen, and his deputy director general, Dr Fanie Visser.
There is concern that their appointments – when the fate of the Public Service Commission was uncertain – were made to put these two people in a position for re- election to the commission, so undermining the new constitutionally-defined parliamentary selection process. Further concern is voiced as to whether their close association with Skweyiya (since 1994) will prevent them from fulfilling their role of watchdogs over the executive and his ministry.
However, the Public Service Commission has asserted that the appointments were made on the basis of merit and experience to replace two commissioners who had resigned. Skweyiya said the men were his choice and they were important to the new public service because they played critical roles in winning over the unions to the transformation process.
A spokesman said it was feared that criticism of the appointment of Erntzen and Visser was fuelled by people wanting to wage a war against Skweyiya.