Accra, Oct. 8, GNA - A three-week accelerated training programme for the leadership of Ghana Civil Service opened in Accra on Monday with a call on civil servants to embrace the programme to improve service delivery and attain national development goals.

Mr Samuel Owusu-Agyei, Minister of Public Sector Reform said this could be achieved through continuous training of civil servants who were capable of providing world-class service and manage complex issues pertaining to both the public and private sector environments. He said education and training of civil servants was an enterprise with a clear objective to serve the people. It was also to serve public interest in fairness and manage public resources properly on a daily basis.

"The learning and training process must never end but (should) be considered and reconsidered continuously," he said. The training programme, the fifth in a series, is packaged in 12 modules, and is competency-oriented to help establish a new public administration system, as part of ongoing reforms across the public service.

In all, 45 directors from the District, Municipal and Metropolitan Assemblies throughout the country are participating in the programme. It is under the theme: "Positioning Directors to Deliver Professional Service at the Divisional Levels to Enhance Co-ordination of Work for Attainment of Higher Productivity in Various Sectors of the Economy." It was being organised by the Ministry of Public Sector Reform in collaboration with the Office of the Head of Civil Service (OHCS) and the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) under the Directors' Component of Accelerated Training programme for the leadership of the Ghana Civil Service.

Mr. Owusu-Agyei said the participants would be expected to practice definite technical leadership and management of subjects of policy work in their sectors; and produce programmes and projects to raise the absorptive capacity of national institutions for the utilisation of resources made available by the government and the development partners. "They would also be expected to exercise effectiveness and efficiency in the utilisation of development resources resulting from improved policy-programming and evaluation systems and develop capacity for accounting for the impact of public policies," he said.

Professor Stephen Adei, Rector of GIMPA, said the programme targeted Chief Directors as topmost professionals, as well as Directors, Heads of Departments and analogous grades in the Civil Service. He said there was the need to have competent and visionary leadership for the current reforms co-ordinated by the Ministry. The programme was therefore structured to introduce the leadership of the Civil Service to the roles, skills, competencies and challenges in their roles in delivering public services to the citizenry. Mr Joe D. Isaachar, Head of Civil Service, said the programme would afford them the opportunity to share ideas and experiences to push the country forward and he urged them to pay particular attention to the resource persons and apply what they would learn in their daily schedules.

The participants would be taken through the current deficiencies in leadership, strategic planning, management decision making, problem solving and public policy making in Ghana and their attendant logical consequences.