This is a near verbatim transcript of a media briefing by UNTAET Director of the Civil Service Department, Andrew Whitley, on the opening of the Civil Service Academy and the recommendation on the Timorese Deputies District Administrators.
5 May, 2000 Dili
Andrew Whitley: Good morning ladies and gentlemen.
I thought I would inform you today of the decisions taken yesterday by the Public Service Commission which held its sixth meeting yesterday, it was a very productive session.
The fist decision was over the recruitment of the Deputy Administrators, these will be the most senior East Timorese officials in the district.
We approved yesterday the job descriptions and we will be stating the recruitment process on Monday and during the next two weeks we will be asking for applications for these positions, which will then be reviewed by the Public Service Commission.
The new deputies will be the shadows or the understudies for the District Administrators, so they will be the people waiting to take over if they prove themselves in their positions.
I want to emphasize here that as with other appointments for the East Timor Administration, this is an open process, people are not being picked and then appointed.
I will now briefly mention two other decisions that were part of the decisions that required for the setting up of the permanent salary structure and the allowances and benefits. One concerns travel allowances and the other is resettlement allowances.
This is in order to permit us to be able to have a policy to pay people who are travelling to the districts for work outside their normal area of employment.
I won t go into the details now, if you wish you are welcome to ask me afterwards.
The other subject is one that is necessary to go together with the decision that has not been taken yet on salaries which has to do with overtime pay. Once people have finished their regular work how much do they get paid, what is the policy on overtime?
In case you are not aware of it, the Public Service Commission has already decided that starting of the beginning of this month, meaning effectively from Tuesday, the normal working weeks is going to be 40 hours a week, with five days a week.
If people work beyond these hours, during the normal workweek, they are entitled to 115% of the regular salary. If they work on weekends or during official holidays, they get 130% of the regular salary.
In order to prevent abuse by the employer or employee, the maximum amount of overtime is limited to 12 hours a week and to 35 hours per month.
But overtime is only paid to civil servants in the three junior grades in the level 1, 2, and 3 and not to the top grades which are level 4 and 5.
This is to prevent people like me, who work 60 a 70 hours per week, to get paid extra. Any questions?
Q: This overtime policy, is that only for UNTAET staff or also for NGOs?
A: Thank you for the question, this is an important opportunity to clarify. These policies do not apply to UNTAET local staff. Let s be very clear, it applies to the staff who is being employed for the East Timorese Administration. That is for all those who are part of the new government of East Timor; that is not for UNTAET local staff.
It s not the international staff and it is not the East Timorese staff who is employed by the UN, it is the East Timorese staff employed by the East Timorese Administration, which is separate.
So in other words, it does not apply to NGOs or private companies, this is a policy for the public sector.
I want to answer the question of this gentleman who asked about salaries in the civil service.
The decision has to be taken in the Public Service Commission this month and then it will be approved by the National Consultative Council.
This is a very important decision and we have been preparing very carefully for it because it has very considerable implications for the economy for East Timor.
For the moment the stipends are still in force for all of the East Timor admin civil servants till the time that the permanent salary scale is approved, which we expect this month.
So I cannot tell you any precise figures of what the salary scale is going to be at this stage, but the decision is coming quite soon.
And finally let me just tell you that we have the opening on Monday, at 12 o clock, of the Civil Service Campus, you are very welcome to attend, it is an important event for the East Timorese Administration.
The reason it is important is very simple, is that the subject of training is perhaps the most important one for the country for the next couple of years, and we are going to be the location where training and skills are going to be provided for the East Timor for the next two to three years. So thank you very much.
