Sunday 28, July, 2024
Prime Minister Dr. Bishr Al-Khasawneh: Today, the Council of Ministers approved the reasons for amending the civil service system to allow public sector employees to work outside official working hours in accordance with controls that ensure that there is no impact on the employee’s productivity, that there is no conflict of interest, and that guarantees impartiality in obtaining permission to work.
Prime Minister Dr. Bishr Al-Khasawneh said during his presidency of the Council of Ministers session on Sunday that the Council approved today the reasons for amending the civil service system. This allows public sector employees to work outside official working hours “in accordance with controls that ensure no impact on the employee’s productivity, no conflict of interest, and ensuring impartiality in obtaining work permission.”
The Prime Minister confirmed that this step comes in light of the results of the in-depth impact study that he directed to conduct on the aspect related to allowing public sector workers to work outside official working hours, pointing out that, according to measuring the general impact, the total number of public sector employees who obtained permits to work outside working hours The official one is “relatively limited and less than a thousand employees in the entire public sector” from various ministries and institutions.
Al-Khasawneh added that, despite this, the Council of Ministers has provided compelling reasons to introduce an amendment or addition to the civil service system that permits work outside official working hours for employees in the public sector “according to very transparent controls that guarantee basic determinants, including: that the work does not affect the public employee’s productivity in the workplace.” His basic job, and that we do not create any cases of conflict of interest between this private work and the basic work performed by those who work in the public sector, in addition to ensuring impartiality in obtaining permission to work.”
He pointed out that there were definitely cases of conflict, “but in reality it is not the employee who was given permission to work in the private sector that is to blame, but rather the competent authority, whether it is the competent minister with regard to the jobs of the second group of the higher category or the competent authority with regard to other jobs.” Such permits were given in cases where there was a conflict of interest between the job performed by the worker in the public sector and the private work performed by the employee. Stressing that this matter will be subject to controls within the framework of an amendment to the civil service system or addition to it.
He also stressed that the entity that will issue the permit and permission to the public employee to work outside the official working hours will not be an individual entity, but rather there will be a neutral entity to issue the permission, whether that is from a committee, body, or authority based on a set of standards developed by the Ministerial Legal Committee and the Bureau of Legislation and Opinion.
The Prime Minister added that allowing public sector employees to work outside official working hours entails an exchange of benefits and experiences, noting that there are public sector workers who have the qualifications, experience, and expertise “to provide an academic addition if available or if they wish to lecture at universities or in a sector such as the... Information technology, which allows us to benefit from experiences provided by private sector companies. We also maintain these competencies as part of our quest for digital transformation and to be a pioneer on the map of digital transformation, automation, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, etc., which requires us to preserve these competencies and enable them to exercise deep experiences in the context of... Partial work in the private sector, and the same with regard to other competencies in different sectors, so that there is an exchange of interests.
In the context of modernizing the public sector, Al-Khasawneh pointed out that the government has taken many legislative, procedural, and structural steps, including gradually abandoning the idea of inventory within a gradual mix and mixture that begins with a percentage allocated to inventory in government competition, such that this percentage increases at the expense of inventory until the inventory ends completely in The year 2027 AD, stressing that this path is realistic, fundamental, and important for modernizing and reforming the public sector, which must ultimately be based on the element of efficiency based on a competitive mechanism that allows the best to be offered to fill government positions on a clear, single and objective basis of competition that leads to the public sector regaining its splendor in the context that we want A public sector that is empowered and enabling of the private sector and investments, and whose focus should be providing the best service to the citizen; It should be an essential lever for the economic modernization vision and its goals, especially with regard to networking with the private sector and creating an attractive and enabling environment for local and foreign investments.