PMO interactive session strengthened Senior Assistant Secretaries competences

The Personnel Management Office (PMO) organized a 4 day Interactive training session from 28st – 31st October, 2019 for Senior Assistant Secretaries from government Ministries and Departments, at the PMO conference Room.

Mr. Lamin F Jawara, the Permanent Secretary (PMO) opened the session by welcoming the participants and thanking them for coming to PMO for this important refresher. He said, he expect the sessions to be interactive , participants should be able to voice out concerns and doubts regarding their job functions and resource person together with participants will deliberate on it ; thereby further enhancing participant understanding of PMO’s functions.

PS Jawara added that Senior Assistant Secretaries functions are very important because they are the human resources personnel of their various MDA’s. “you write most of the letters in your respective departments, so you must be well versed in your responsibilities for example: you must know the procedures to process maternity leave, sick leave, confirmation etc, so that, when people comes to you with their enquiries, you will be in the right knowledge to provide the necessary information” PS Jawara postulated.

The Director of Training, Mr. Lamin Saidy said, the main objective of the training is to discuss various aspects of personnel matters and procedures to enhanced knowledge, skills and attitudes of participants. And also to instill basic Human Resources Management skills and knowledge in participants in order to enhance competencies and improve service delivery in the civil service.

Director of Personnel Management Division (PMD) Ousainou Barrow took the participants through the general routine aspects of his division mainly Human Resource Management functions such as appointments, promotions, postings, termination of appointments, processing retirement benefits of retired civil servants, leaves, pensions and gratuity, performance appraisals as well as other matters affecting the Public Service Commission Regulations.

According to Mr.Barrow nomination for promotion must be in line with the following procedure such as, sending a recommendation together with a complete promotion form, verify with the scheme of service (SOS) whether recommendation is in line with SOS, verify if there is a vacancy in which the officer is intended to be promoted to, verify officer last promotion and comment if the officer recommended is the most senior, establish the jump in grade, if so, justify.

One of the participants at the training Mr. Omar Sarge said that, the training was quite satisfactory because it provides them the opportunity to meet with the senior management members of PMO and discussed some of the rules books of the civil service of the Government of the Gambia. “Widening engagement with sectors will enable PMO easily coordinate government policies and programmes; provide incentives for participants in order to encourage their participation and implement genuine suggestion made by the participants” Mr. Sarge recommended.

By Musa Saho