Oyo-Ita Decries Lack of Skills among Civil Servants

Oyo-Ita Decries Lack of Skills among Civil Servants

Olawale Ajimotokan and Udora Orizu in Abuja

Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF), Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, yesterday lamented that federal government workers in various ministries lacked the requisite knowledge and skills to perform their jobs and other tasks assigned to them.

Oyo-Ita, who stated this in Abuja while launching the redesigned training modules on SMAT-P, LEAD-P and induction, lamented that despite series of training modules handed over to workers during training organised for them, they still performed below expectations.

According to her, training modules are filled with contents that are mere routine and academic as they were not based on the real work place requirements.

She said: “Over the years, the absence of structured and targeted training programmes for civil servants has been a major challenge to the Federal Civil Service.

“Training activities across the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) have hitherto been carried out haphazardly without considering the actual competencies lacking in the service. This approach has exacerbated the knowledge and skills gap in the service.”

“Despite the series of training programmes going on across the service, civil servants still lack the requisite knowledge and skills required for their jobs. In most cases, training modules are filled with contents that are mere routine and academic as they were not based on the real work place requirements.”

Oyo-Ita maintained that there is no going back on the federal government plan to transform the country’s civil service, adding that such organisational transformation move prompted the Head of Service to launch the 2017-2020 Federal Civil Service Strategy Implementation Plan (FCSSIP-2020) few years back.

She said: “As you may recall, we launched the 2017-2020 Federal Civil Service Strategy Implementation Plan (FCSSIP-2020), indicating a commitment to organisational transformation, with a vision to build a modern public service organisation that provides world class service for Sustainable National Development.

“It also envisioned a change in behaviour from bureaucracy to an entrepreneurial result-oriented and innovative public service among other goals.

“The FCSSlP-2020 was approved by the FEC to support the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) of federal government in the area of civil service transformation,” adding that the government had earlier conducted a service-wide Training Needs Assessment (TNA).

The HoS added: “The FCSSIP-2020 addresses the challenge of untargeted training facing the service. The focus of the plan is to ascertain the obvious knowledge and skill gaps in the civil service and design relevant training contents to fill them.

“ln line with that vision, service-wide Training Needs Assessment (TNA) was conducted as the initial step towards the redesign and re-launch of the existing three core modules on SMAT-P. LEAD-P and induction.”

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