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Published on July 16, 2007

There is no fairness at all when a physician in civil service with 10 years' experience earns about Bt40,000 a month while a clerk with similar service earns only marginally less.

And it is even more unfair when this doctor could be making Bt150,000 a month at a private hospital.

This extreme example is one of the reasons why the Civil Service Commission (CSC) is seeking amendments to the Civil Service Act, mainly to allow high-performing civil servants to advance in their careers regardless of length of service, to improve the government's efficiency and stop the high turnover of staff.

Though only 400,000 out of two million civil servants will be subject to the amended act if the National Legislative Assembly approves the changes, it is hoped that improvements in their efficiency will encourage other government units employing 1.6 million staff to make similar changes.

"We want to overhaul the human-resources system following changes in other sectors. This is partly to retain professionals in the areas where the government is still competitive. At private hospitals, for reasons of competition, clerks and doctors are in different grades. The classification scheme has existed for years, but we as the government have been a little bit slow in adjusting to it," said CSC secretary-general Preecha Watcharapai.

The amendments, viewed by many as the government's attempt to please civil servants with higher pay, are instead set to revamp a bureaucratic system of more than 100 years in which seniority was the main criterion for pay rises and career advancement.

From a single classification system, the amended law will put 400,000 civil servants in four classes: Executive, managerial, academic and general.

At present, they are classified by the so-called "C" levels from 1 to 11, for each of which there are specific posts and a fixed quota. This means that despite doing great work, a civil servant cannot move up to the next level if the quota is full - an environment that does encourage staff to improve performance.

The four classes will have a range of salaries to be awarded according to performance. Notably, the amendments will mainly affect professional civil servants - including physicians and engineers - who number about 15,000.

A performance record of concrete achievements, which must be ready for cross-examination for transparency reasons, will be used to justify pay rises. All officers will carry a personal record and their superiors' signatures will be required to certify their achievements. According to CSC senior adviser Nontigorn Kanchanachitra, the new

system will prevent civil

servants from bribing their bosses for promotions.

"We will have an ethics committee whose members are nominated by a selection committee chaired by a Supreme Administrative Court judge. Any dissatisfied civil servants can file complaints against bosses who reward other officials who have achieved nothing in the past year," he said.

To increase good governance, the amended law contains clauses that tell civil servants their obligations to the public, with a warranty that they will be entitled to higher pay if they serve the public well.

Nontigorn has been very instrumental in the amendment process, which kicked off in 1999 with assistance from human-resources company Hays Group. From 2002, more than 100 civil servants worked on Hays Group's proposals, with the main objective to increase the government sector's competency through best practice used in foreign countries.

"All processes are supported by research. To date, the requirements of a job do not match individual competency. Sometimes an incompetent person is promoted to handle a tough job. Under the new law, job requirements and pay are realigned. A worker's competence will decide what kind of job they do," Nontigorn said.

The reclassification is expected to take up to a year, meaning no budget changes will be required until then. After that the budget needed for civil servants' pay could rise, Nontigorn said.

If the budget increase is delayed then the government could start implementing the pay increases later, but that would not maximise the effects of the reclassification, he said.

The amendments do not cover the 1.6 million civil servants in the education, police, judicial, military and local government sectors. But Nontigorn believes that if the changes are successful, other units will adopt similar practices in order to increase competitiveness.

Preecha envisioned that since the changes would narrow the gap between the private and public sectors through results-based management, the government sector's performance would. Supporting this environment is job security, as all civil servants know they will be rewarded on performance, not through bribery.

"Certainly, those who get higher pay are obliged to work harder to justify the change. Overall, the CSC is confident that the amended law is in line with social changes, as it allows civil servants to show their maximum capability, ensures transparency and fairness, and reduces mischievous behaviour," Preecha concluded.

Achara Deboonme,

Chularat Saengpassa

The Nation