Shameem: Prideworthy achievements by CSC despite hurdles

President of Civil Service Commission, Dr. Ali Shameem has remarked that the commission had made some prideworthy achievements over the last year despite having to face numerous challenges.

Dr. Shameem made the remark during his speech at the function held this Thursday morning to release the commission’s annual report for 2016.

He said that 2016 had been the most challenging year for CSC in its nine-year history, but that the commission had overcome the challenges to make some huge achievements.

“We faced huge challenges with the smallest budget in the commission’s history and having to deal with austerity measures taken by the government in face of mounting civil service expenditure,” said Shameem.

Shameem said the commission adopted new approaches and increased use of modern technology to work around the changes and reform the commission’s work.

He said the commission ran a number of refresher courses as well as other programs for the 24,501 civil servants under its care; including the trips made by the commission to meet with civil servants working in the atolls.

“Top officials from CSC met with civil servants working in A. A., A. Dh. And N. Atoll, as well as those working in some of the ministries in Male’ for assessment of their wellbeing and discussions. And work was done based on those discussions to reform the system, reform management of civil service and improve quality of services,” said Shameem.

The population of civil servants is dominated by females.

There are 13,620 female civil servants in Maldives, the largest percentage of whom work as teachers.

There are 3,685 women working as civil servants in the field of education.

Shameem said the biggest failure for the commission in 2016 was the lack of increase in civil servant salaries.

“The small budget last year led to challenges in achieving the objectives set in the strategic plan. I note with sadness that there was no improvement to salaries or allowances of ordinary civil servants even as the year ended,” said Shameem.