The Head of Civil Service, Nana Kwasi Agyekum Dwamena, has advised civil servants to refrain from party politics since officers of the Service were expected to be neutral and loyal only to the country.
He said the core values of the Service are impartiality, neutrality, non-partisan and fairness and charged officers to be guided by these values in the discharge of their official duties, adding that officers should avoid actions that would make the public aligned the service to a particular political party.
Nana Dwamena, who gave the advice at a press launch of the 2020 Civil Service Week in Accra, said the image of the Service would be denigrated if people suspect that a section of the officers are biased and lean themselves to a particular political party.
He said though officers were allowed to vote in fulfillment of their civic responsibilities, they are not allowed to engage in active politics and urged them to maintain a sense of duty only to the course of the country.
He hinted that the Office of the Head of Civil Service would investigate any allegation of engagement of any officer in open party politics and such officer would be sanctioned if found culpable.
On the challenges affecting the Service, he said the duties of some Technical Advisors serving Ministers overlap the duties of civil servants.
He said some Technical Advisors perform the functions of civil servants and this situation sometimes makes some of the officers idle.
He, therefore, called for a clear definition of the duties of the Technical Advisors so that they would not interfere with the work of civil servants.
He said another challenge facing the Service was inadequate resources to build the capacities of officers in specialised areas to enable them to discharge their duties effectively.
To solve the problem, he said the Service has begun recruiting professionals such as lawyers and accountants to address this challenge.
Ishmael Batoma, ISD
