RCSC will remove these posts from dzongkhag administrations and redeploy the officials 

RCSC: The Royal Civil Service Commission (RCSC) will soon remove three posts of administrative, revenue and budget officers from all dzongkhag administrations.

The recently completed Organisation Development (OD) exercise found the positions no longer having clear roles and responsibilities and workloads for these positions had greatly reduced. These positions are either found to have become defunct or assumed by other officers.

RCSC conducted the OD exercise in seven dzongkhags to review the mandates and capacities of agencies, align organisational goals with the national goals, improve efficiency and effectiveness of public services and right size the civil service based on the emerging needs.

One of the tools used for conducting OD exercise was the Daily Log of Activities. All civil servants were asked to maintain logs to analyse their nature of work and alignment to dzongkhag’s core objectives and workload.

RCSC chairman Karma Tshiteem said the three positions were assessed based on current core mandates of the dzongkhag administration vis-à-vis Daily Log of Activities and other assessments.

Initially when administrative officers’ position was approved, they were tasked with human resource (HR), procurement, administrative and operation functions. Today with the position of dzongrab, HR officers and procurement officer in all dzongkhag administrations, the positions appeared to have become defunct.

“Most of their functions have been assumed by HR officers, procurement officers and the responsibilities in administration and operations have been assumed by dzongrab,” the chairman said. “Hence, these positions no longer have clear roles and responsibilities nor workload befitting an officer rank.”

Revenue sections of the dzongkhag were tasked with collecting revenue such as house, cattle and other local taxes.

However, following a decentralisation of the Chathrim, 2002 and subsequent Local Government Act, gewog administrations were given the responsibility of collecting and using these taxes.

The core function was no longer with the revenue section and the OD exercise found that workload has greatly reduced. To optimise resources, it was recommended that revenue section be merged with the accounts and budget.

Revenue officer or an assistant will now be multi-tasked with other finance and accounts functions, as their competencies are similar.

In case of budget officers, their role was to develop and manage the annual budget.

“While this is an important task, it is not a full time job,” Karma Tshiteem said. “The OD recommendation is to merge accounts and budget functions in the dzongkhags so that they can be both undertaken (multi-tasking) by the accounts officer and the post of budget officer will be removed. “

He added that the changes would not cause any disruptions to the functions of dzongkhags. Since these posts’ mandates have changed over time, he said, they are no longer required as full time officers.

One of the objectives of the OD exercise was to look at such issues periodically, commission officials said. Issues such as change in policy and legal context, technology and other changes, officials said, do have bearing on mandate, structure, strategy, staffing and skills of an organisation. Accordingly recommendations would be made to help optimise resources.

In terms of re-deployment of such position holders, Karma Tshiteem said the recommendation is to re-deploy them as far as possible within the dzongkhag administrations to relevant vacant positions.

Nirmala Pokhrel

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