Permanent Secretaries to face penalties for inefficiency

With delays and overrun of public sector contracts, the Cabinet is now monitoring the work of Permanent Secretaries to ensure efficiency.

On Thursday, Minister of State Joseph Harmon announced that Cabinet will now hold monthly statutory meetings with Permanent Secretaries to ensure that there is a timely disbursement of funds and other measures to ensure contracts are executed in a timely manner.

He also said that there would be appropriate penalties if the job is not done. Since the monitoring began, Harmon said results have been observed.

“The review that was done on the performance up to June of 2017 reveals certain things which I spoke about….the non-completion of contracts, the fact that contracts were not over-runned and things like that.

“Since the Cabinet instituted monthly briefings by the Permanent Secretaries to the Cabinet itself, what I can say is that there has been a dramatic turnaround in the performance of these contracts…”

He stated that by the end of 2017, all of the agencies were reporting completions within the range of 75 to 100 percent.