THERE have been administrative blunders made by the Ministry of Education’s Human Resources Department during the roll-out of Government’s civil service reforms.
This was the comment made by Acting Prime Minister, Attorney- General and Education Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum at the Fiji Head Teachers Association conference in Nadi yesterday.
Referring to a statement he had issued on September 2, he said Government had never shied away from the fact that there were issues and that was why reforms were needed.
“In that statement, I also said in the last paragraph and I want to dwell on this a bit, it says ‘we fully acknowledge that the Ministry of Education has had issues with reaching and servicing our teachers in the past and that there are still administrative matters in particular with the Human Resources Department and the District Education Offices that need to be addressed and dramatically improved’.”
Representatives from the headteachers association had made the comment about the need to have professional human resource (HR) officers with a background in education to better serve the needs of teachers.
“And I have said this openly, we admit that there have been administrative goof ups, to put it bluntly, in the HR Department. I completely agree with some of the speakers prior to me saying we need to get professional HR people. I completely agree with that, in fact we’ve been saying that.
“It’s not only the Ministry of Education that needs professional HR people, many of the Government ministries actually need that.
“Because HR has always been relegated to a sub category within most of the ministries.”
