Essential Action   >Structural Adjustment and Labor

Laos

Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, March 20, 2001

Effective public service personnel management, is currently constrained by the lack of appropriate organisational structures, inadequate staffing levels, low salaries, lack of job descriptions and job classification systems, weak establishment control and manpower planning systems, inadequate personnel management information systems and overall public service costs.. To allow for substantial improvements with regard to pay and compensation in the public service, the Government has decided to tackle the critical issue of performance management, to gradually reduce the number of public servants and to replace non-productive government staff with more results-oriented employees.

(from policy matrix)
Downsize civil service employment by 5 percent
of civil service employment -- 2001-02

11. Overall expenditure will be restrained while ensuring increased funding for critical areas. Operations, maintenance, and local counterpart spending will be increased for key social services in support of poverty reduction, especially for primary education and basic health services, and for vital social and economic infrastructure (in particular for rural development). The wage bill will be increased by 20 percent to partially compensate for past inflation. The size of the civil service will be reduced by 5 percent by the end of 2001/02. Subsidies to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) will continue to be avoided.