Service awards to boost efficiency: PSC

The Public Service Commission’s Service Excellence Awards will see some minor changes that will enhance the merit-based awards to better reflect the changes undertaken by government ministries and agencies.

Permanent Secretary Parmesh Chand while launching the 7th Awards in Suva yesterday highlighted some of major achievements that has been the result of the award system, which pushes these agencies to perform better and with greater efficiency.

The Fiji Revenue and Customs Authority chief executive officer, Jitoko Tikolevu in a PSC statement said his organisation joined the SEA last year because the FRCA wanted to benchmark itself against international organisations.

“We really had two reasons for joining, one being, as you would know we are the only tax collection entity in Fiji so we wanted to benchmark ourselves against the international organisations,” he said.

“Secondly, we wanted to uplift the standard within FRCA to serve our customers better”.

 This is the first time the assessment will be done along the Malcom Baldrige Framework rather than the Australian Framework.  The new system is world renowned and is already being used by the Fiji National University’s National and Productivity Centre.

 The keynote speaker at the awards, which will be held at Novotel this Friday will be Singapore’s former bureaucrat Peter Ho Hak Ean.

Prime Minister and Minister for Public Service, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama will be the chief guest at the event.

By Reginald Chandar