PSC complains agreed disciplinary measures still not introduced

The Public Service Commission was disappointed that it did not manage to introduce by the end of last year the disciplinary measures agreed upon in principle with the administration.

PSC chairman Alfred Fiorini Lowell said in the commission's 2009 annual report that the new measures were aimed at improving the application of the disciplinary procedures across the public service. Last year, the PSC had commented that discipline in the public service had deteriorated in recent years.

He said the main aspect of these measures - the nomination of retired public officers to sit on disciplinary boards - was, however, to be implemented in the first half of this year.

Mr Fiorini Lowell said that the commission's work during 2009 was again characterised by the need to plan for the introduction of the major reforms envisaged by the wide-ranging Public Administration Act. The PSC-relation provisions had still to come into force.

During the year under review, the commission issued 361 calls for applications for the filling of vacancies in the public service, 198 of which were open also to applicants from outside the service. Turning to discipline, the reports says the commission made 71 recommendations. Of these 29 were for employees to be suspended from work pending the outcome of court cases and 11 for dismissal after a guilty verdict by the courts.

The commission submitted three other recommendations for the lifting of interdiction in respect of officers against whom criminal proceedings were still pending before the courts. In one case, the officer had not yet been charged after two years, while in the other two cases, the courts had still not pronounced judgment after two years and three years respectively.

The commission also considered a case, and submitted its advice to the Prime Minister, for the withholding of the un-commuted pension of a former public officer who had been convicted by the courts for a criminal offence and sentenced to three years' imprisonment after having retired from the service. It also advised that the same amount payable in terms of the Pensions Ordinance be paid in full to his wife till the expiration of her husband's prison sentence.