The Plenum of the Parliament passed by a majority the laws concerning the evaluation and promotion of civil servants, including interdepartmental promotion, as part of the civil service reform.
The relevant bills were originally tabled in Parliament in September 2015 on the basis of the commitments contained in the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Republic of Cyprus and the Troika on horizontal human resource management issues in the public service, and were subsequently withdrawn and re-filed.
The MPs present from all parties except the EPP voted in favour, while in the second of the three pieces of legislation the President of the Ecologists, Haralambos Theopeptou, abstained.
The purpose of the first law is to amend the Civil Service Law in order to achieve the assignment to the Civil Service Commission (CSC) of the responsibility of monitoring the proper implementation of the evaluation system for civil servants, as well as the implementation of internal safeguards in all CSC procedures to ensure compliance with the formulas, legal framework and principles governing the selection of candidates.
The purpose of the second law concerning the evaluation of candidates for promotion, interdepartmental promotion and first appointment and promotion in the civil service is to establish a new legislative framework for the evaluation and selection of candidates by the PSC to fill vacant posts in the civil service, with the ultimate aim of ensuring the selection of the most suitable candidates and the effective application of the basic principles of objectivity and meritocracy.
The purpose of the proposed regulations, adopted on the basis of Article 87 of the Civil Service Law, is to establish secondary legislation regulating the evaluation process of civil servants on the basis of a new evaluation system, according to specific evaluation criteria concerning, inter alia, skills, abilities and work behaviour.
Furthermore, regulations are proposed concerning, inter alia, the determination of an official's suitability for promotion or interdepartmental promotion, the stages and Marinos Sizopoulos had proposed an exemption from interdepartmental promotion for specific positions in the Ministry of Defence dealing with specialised issues and Haralambos Theopeptou the general removal of the provision for interdepartmental promotion and the possibility to record oral interviews of candidates.
DIKO MP Chrysanthos Savvidis referred to the amendment of Mr. Tryfonidis and disagreed, saying that in recent years many educated people with academic qualifications have been applying for positions in low ranks and that it is unacceptable to give more weight to experience than to qualifications.
ELAM MP Sotiris Ioannou said that with the bills the narrow circle to which the civil service is restricted is widening instead of shrinking and that buffoonery and bribery will not be effectively beaten in this way but only by cracking down on partisanship. He further said that the present bills alone cannot stand as a reform and there will be no world-historical change in the civil service in terms of bureaucracy and service to citizens.
In these reports, Speaker of the Parliament Anita Demetriou said that she hopes that in the battle of the ideal we do not lose the achievable.
MP for the Ecologists Stavros Papadouris said that they are not 100% satisfied with what they will vote for, but a first step is being taken. He also pointed out that there are two tiers of employees in the public and private sector and this gap between public and private employees who are more vulnerable should be bridged through entrepreneurship.
PPP MP Marinos Mousiuttas said that the party is in favour of the institution of interdepartmental promotion and said that there has been enough improvement in the bills and there will be improvement in the civil service, "as long as we monitor the system to see if there are vulnerabilities and correct them." Referring to his amendment, he said he believes that the opportunity for a subordinate to evaluate the supervisor should be mandatory and anonymous, with the aim of improving the supervisor-subordinate relationship.
EPP President Marinos Sizopoulos said that the reform should serve to reduce bureaucracy, increase productivity, ensure meritocracy in terms of promotion, transparency for promotions and recruitment, public confidence in the civil service and that there should be a real and significant reduction in the cost of its operation and contribute to economic strengthening and economic activity.
He added that the present laws do not meet these expectations and that the subjective factor in terms of evaluations and upgrading of officials is significantly strengthened, that bureaucracy and the dependence of civil servants on their superiors is increased. He said that the EPP does not support the bills, since, among other things, the criterion of performance and productivity of civil servants is absent.
DIKO MP Chrysis Pantelides said that these laws are a step in the right direction, while it may be necessary to take further steps. He said that the majority of civil servants are both good at their jobs and hardworking and said that the biggest reform will be achieved if they realise that their employer is not the state but every Cypriot whom they have to serve.
AKEL MP Christos Christofides said that these bills are not a reform of the civil service but regulate evaluation and interdepartmental promotions.
For AKEL, he said, reform is about structural changes, reducing and eliminating bureaucracy, enhancing transparency in decision-making, geographical decentralisation, e-government and enhancing productivity. At the same time, he added that AKEL will approve bills that give arms, but how they are used depends on the political will of the government of the day. She also noted that the parliament passed the legislation on the mobility of civil servants and witnessed the consolidation of bribery and favouritism.
DIKO MP Christiana Erotokritou said that the reform of the civil service as envisioned is not reflected in these bills. She added that the government is telling the Cypriot citizen that of the 1000 things it had to do as a memorandum obligation since 2013, today it is doing one.
DIKO said it envisions better, faster, simpler, more transparent and cheaper service of society's needs. At the same time, he said they will vote for the laws, assuring those in power that the reform does not stop here.
Limassol MP Andreas Themistocleous said that real reform would be if from tomorrow morning the civil service answered citizens' phone calls and responded in a better way and if too many civil servants stopped behaving like little torturers and changed their mentality.
He also said that from a certain scale upwards, civil servants should be held civilly responsible for the consequences of their actions. She also described as "cute" what DIKO said, adding that under their rule, the party had been appointing heaps of people to the civil service whenever they wanted by whatever criteria they wanted.
Responding, Erotokritou said "it is common knowledge who the cute ones in this room are."
DISY MP Harris Georgiades expressed satisfaction for the majority that was formed in favour of the bills, so that a very important step of modernization towards meritocracy and efficiency in the public service could be realized and thanked the parliamentary parties.
He added that this reform follows other important ones approved by the Parliament such as the EEE, the GESY, the National Guard, mobility in the civil service, etc.
Noting that they do not claim that the bills address all the problems, he said that a step is being taken alongside digital transformation and e-governance. He added that DISY will not support the amendments, and even the exemptions from the interdepartmental promotions that were passed do not agree with them and they do not know if they will stand constitutionally.
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