The Of­fice of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) has re­ceived Cab­i­net ap­proval for the con­duct of a job eval­u­a­tion and com­pen­sa­tion ex­er­cise for of­fices in the civ­il ser­vice, in­clud­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties, sub­ject to the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Act.

Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PwC) Lim­it­ed has been elect­ed through an open ten­der­ing process and will pro­vide con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices for the ex­er­cise which is ex­pect­ed to be­gin this month for a pe­ri­od of two years.

A state­ment from the CPO’s of­fice said in keep­ing with Gov­ern­ment’s Vi­sion 2030 De­vel­op­men­tal Theme of “Pro­mot­ing Good Gov­er­nance and Ser­vice ex­cel­lence,” the cen­tral ob­jec­tive of this project is the in­stal­la­tion of a mod­ern job Eval­u­a­tion and com­pen­sa­tion sys­tem in the civ­il ser­vice.

It said this tech­nol­o­gy-en­abled job eval­u­a­tion and com­pen­sa­tion sys­tem would in­clude ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion struc­tures which would en­sure eq­ui­ty, ad­dress any anom­alies that may ex­ist cur­rent­ly, re­flect the rel­a­tive worth of all of­fices, and be rel­e­vant to the present and fu­ture needs of the civ­il ser­vice.

The CPO said to achieve this, ap­pro­pri­ate mech­a­nisms and cri­te­ria for ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sys­tem will be es­tab­lished, as well as strate­gies and plans to en­sure the suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion of the project.

One of the de­sired out­comes of this ex­er­cise is a strength­ened civ­il ser­vice that is more com­pet­i­tive and de­liv­ers a high­er lev­el of ser­vice to our cit­i­zens, vis­i­tors and in­vestors.

The state­ment said in recog­ni­tion of the im­por­tant role that the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) plays in the suc­cess of this ex­er­cise, the as­so­ci­a­tion was en­gaged in the eval­u­a­tion process for the se­lec­tion of the con­sul­tant.

Be­yond this ini­tial role, the PSA is an­tic­i­pat­ed to be an in­te­gral part of the “sen­si­ti­sa­tion ses­sions” to be host­ed at the var­i­ous min­istries and gov­ern­ment de­part­ments.

This would en­able col­lab­o­ra­tive en­gage­ments and the ap­pro­pri­ate strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions with pub­lic ser­vice em­ploy­ees of which some would be re­quired to pro­vide job da­ta and in­for­ma­tion for analy­sis.

The CPO said the col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach is cru­cial as “we move to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of a pro­fes­sion­al civ­il ser­vice that meets our coun­try’s de­vel­op­men­tal needs and in­cul­cates the ad­vance­ment of an ever-in­creas­ing pro­duc­tive work cul­ture which would no doubt ben­e­fit each and every cit­i­zen.”

The cost of en­gage­ment of the con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices to be pro­vid­ed for the con­duct of the job eval­u­a­tion and com­pen­sa­tion ex­er­cise in re­spect of of­fices in the civ­il ser­vices in­clud­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties, sub­ject to the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Act, Chap­ter 24:01 is $24,874,508.55.