Containing govt salaries, an endless struggle

The continually rising budget for salaries of personnel in government agencies has been a large problem for all governments. The latest figures from the Office of the Civil Service Commission (CSC) showed that the expenditure on salaries will rise continually at the rate of 6.8 to 7.5 per cent a year. (The figures are based on median values from 2007 to 2013 fiscal years.) In the meantime, the government budget is rising at the rate of 8.04 per cent per year.

 

The CSC Office found that the two top ministries with the highest expenditure on salaries in terms of their ratio to other spending are the Education Ministry (37.76 per cent) and the Defence Ministry (12.39 per cent) on average; while 9.66 per cent of central funding is used to pay salaries 

 

From the 2011 figures, there are 2.72 million government personnel, breaking down to: 1,647,504 civil servants and police and military officials, 177,464 long-term employees, 503,942 temporary employees and 400,447 employees of independent government agencies.

 

The Budget Bureau explained that for most agencies, expenditure on salaries has been rising because of across-the-board pay increases. But the bureau noted that some agencies managed to reduce the salary budget by not hiring more staff to replace those who have retired or resigned.

 

Several governments have been trying to reduce their salaries’ expenditure through several measures, including measures for controlling staffs numbers, and the abolition of the positions of certain officials who have retired. The measures have been enforced by a government committee in charge of determining the number of personnel in government agencies.

 

So far, the iron-fist rules of the personnel reduction panel have not been successful.

 

The failures might be attributed to the fact the government lacked clear policies and directions on the efforts to streamline government agencies. Without a clear direction, government agencies concerned would not cooperate in efforts to make their agencies more compact.

 

Most agencies claimed the need to retain positions and refused to abolish positions after the holders had retired. The government also failed to control some educational institutions from producing excessive numbers of personnel for certain government agencies.

 

A graphic example of a failure in streamlining policy is the latest move by the Public Health Ministry. The ministry last week used a short-term measure to deal with protests by temporary nurses by giving civil servant status to 21,641 nurses in three budget years. In the first year, 7,547 will become civil servants and the ministry will need Bt1.1 billion more a year for hiring the nurses in this new capacity. The budget will come from remaining money for various projects of the Public Health Ministry from 2013 to 2015 fiscal years.

Government spokesman Tossaporn Serirak said the problem of rising costs for salaries prompted Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to call a joint meeting of the CSC and the Public Sector Development Commission (PSDC) to consult them on how to deal with the situation.

 

Tossaporn said the prime minister assigned the two agencies to look into the overall situation and to consider the work and operations of various government agencies.

 

The two agencies have found that some operations of certain agencies could be outsourced to private firms or local administrations.

 

They also found that some operations, which are not necessary could be abolished. The two agencies have yet to consider in detail exactly how many personnel the government agencies will need.

 

The CSC and PSDC have proposed that the bureaucracy needs to be overhauled both in management and budget spending. Further studies will be required as to which positions are really needed and which operations are urgent.

 

The CSC and PSDC proposed that the Budget Bureau should cut budget for works and operations, which are not urgent or the main operations of each agency.

 

The CSC and PSDC also proposed that government agencies use a convergent approach to deal with their overlapping works. The PSDC has compiled the “Activity Base” guideline for government agencies to use to restructure their works and budgets to reduce unnecessary staff.

 

The PSDC also asked government agencies to consider the works based on agenda to improve intra-agency cooperation. The agencies were also asked to consider dissolving intra-agency committees.

 

It has yet to be seen whether the government will be serious in its efforts to streamline agencies and reduce the budget for salaries or not.