Winifred Oyo-Ita, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, said on Thursday that training of civil servants will no longer be a welfare package used to douse labour tensions.
Oyo-Ita, who disclosed this in Abuja while Inaugurating Departmental Training Officers of Federal Ministries, said training and retraining is essential to development of a nation.
She explained that the inauguration was part of efforts to achieve the Executive Orders recently signed by Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, aimed at easing business and fast tracking budget submissions.
She noted that over the years, government does not get the value for money spent on training civil servants.
Oyo-Ita said: “Over the years, training has become a welfare package without getting the true value for the training and that has made the quality of output from civil servants very questionable.
“In those days directors of administration and personnel sit and defend their training budget and work plan and that kept the MDAs focused and that is what we are bringing back now.
“If we are not properly trained we cannot transfer any form of excellence into the business of the country.”
Oyo-Ita said that the goal of the Office of the Head of Service was to enhance capacity development in the service by making it proactive, result oriented and a catalyst for national development.
The Head of Service added that it had become imperative to reposition our human capacity development system through formidable DTOs platform for proper coordination, implementation and monitoring of training activities within respective MDAs.
Oyo-Ita said that the OHCSF would partner with the DTOs forum to achieve these objectives; Conduct Employees Training Needs Assessment, Design/Review of Training Curriculum, Revise MDAs Training guidelines among others.
According to her, the public service is the main instrument through which government implements and administers public policies and programmes.
She called on the DTOs to be committed and render the necessary assistance required for the effective implementation of all training programmes in the MDAs.
Similarly, Folashade Yemi-Esan, the Permanent Secretary, Career Management Office, OHCSF, said that training must stop being a welfare package.
She said that gone are the days when people are sent on training and they come back with nothing.
Yemi-Esan added that the training of DTOs would bring the desired change and participants would serve as change agents.
She also said a lot has been done in recent times to improve the public service and one of that is the signing of Executive Orders and the inauguration of civil service strategic plan.
The permanent secretary pointed out that civil servants are at the Centre of driving these instructions and without adequate training it cannot be achieved.
However, one of the participants, Omobola Adenuga, Deputy Director Training and Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, pledged her commitment to ensuring the set goals were achieved.
She promised that they would formulate training proposals that would be relevant to their organisations.