Accra, April 27, GNA - Mr Joe Donkor Issachar, Head of the Ghana Civil Service, on Friday stressed the need for personnel in the Civil Service to constantly upgrade themselves to meet the challenges of the future.

"It is not the Civil Service per say that is bad but the people who man it is where we have to tackle and make sure the service achieves what we all expect it to be," Mr Issachar said at the closing ceremony for second batch of the Strategic Human Resource Management Programme (SHRMP II) for the leadership of the Ghana Civil Service in Accra. The two-week course in human resource appraisal and performance requirement attracted 31 participants made up deputy directors and heads of departments from the ministries, department and agencies and the civil service.

He urged the participants to use the knowledge acquired during the course to assist the Civil Service change its image as well as the attitude of personnel.

"The Civil Service is prepared to redeem its image by ensuring that its personnel live up to their expectation," he added. Mr Issachar emphasised the need for the Service to be professional in their approach by ensuring that the human resource departments employed competent and qualified people. He said the Civil Service was not there to serve any political interest but to support the government of the day to make it succeed. Mrs Oluwatoyin Job, Adviser-in-Charge of West Africa Region, Commonwealth Secretariat, called for human resource management policies and practices to be supportive of the performance culture of personnel. She said policy makers must seek to understand the forces of change, the different things that motivated the current generation of public officers in order to attract the cream of such people to enter and remain in the public service.

Mrs Job also called on the leadership of the Ghana Civil Service to put in place a system that would ensure that leaders were identified and groomed to fill top leadership positions in the Civil Service since a large number of top management of the Service on the average were going to leave the service in the next few years. "We need to expose our staff to training and allow them to perform in an environment that encourages creativity, innovations and one that rewards good performance and discourages mediocrity." 27 April 07