By Olimatou Coker
Management Development Institute (MDI) in collaboration with Personnel Management Office (PMO) last week completed a four-day induction training for 26 newly recruited civil servants.
“As technology and society progress, updating skills must progress as well. For human being to be productive there must be present necessary fundamental skills. Continuous updating skill is the best way to ensure attentiveness and awareness of the challenges and complexities of the modern workplace,” Alieu K Jarju, the director general of MDI, told employees of the civil service.
He said: “As a public service training institution, the MDI, in partnership with government, share the belief that the fight against poverty; the struggle for sustained development; the eradication of corruption and other geopolitical malaise will be lost or won in our country’s civil service of course with support from the private sector and development partners. But what it means is the civil servants would have to be the foot-soldiers, the new vanguard for discipline, effectiveness and selfless service.”
Jarju told the gathering that no nation can make any headway in economic growth without developing the knowledge, skills and competences of its citizens to manage available resources.
“May I inform the participants that this programme has come at a time when the government of The Gambia embarked on ‘Public Service Reform and institutional capacity development programme’ which aims to build the capacity of all the major sector within the economy,” he disclosed.
The director said MDI will continue to organise series of training programmes for public and private sectors.
“…Our aim is that by the year 2021, this country will have adequate and efficient human resource to man our economy,” he said at the MDI campus in Kanifing, where the training was organised.
Lamin Jawara, permanent secretary of personnel management office, said an induction training is expected of any organisation that hires new workers, and the civil service is no exception.
“When new employees come in they have to be inducted into the civil service. We do this by introducing the operation of government machineries so that at the end of the day you understand your function,” he explained.
Mariama Saine, a participant from the Ministry of Youth and Sport, was among the speakers.
