Session to discuss draft law on civil service

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The financial standing of civil servants should improve or decline in correlation with the improvement or decline of people’s living standards, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko said at the session held on 22 January to discuss the draft law on civil service.

“Today we will discuss the new law on civil service. This is one of the key issues of the personnel policy because the efficiency and authority of the entire government system largely depend on the qualification and motivation of civil servants,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

Administrative work requires high professionalism, devotion to our country, impeccable executive discipline and attention to people from civil servants. “Their decision-making should rely on honesty and justice as the main moral principles. The new law should create a solid foundation for this work,” the head of state emphasized.

The president remarked that a high legal status of civil servants which makes this work very prestigious is impossible without the formalization of social and legal guarantees for civil servants in the law. But these guarantees should correlate with the obligations and responsibilities of every civil servant, he stressed.

“When I gave an instruction to work out this law I warned you that all the incentives envisaged in any law in the form of certain social guarantees should not be too generous,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said. “The financial standing of civil servants should improve or decline in correlation with the improvement or decline of people’s living standards. This is a key issue.”

According to the head of state, one of his major requirements regarding the law is the formalization of mandatory rules of conduct as the pillar of executive discipline.

The draft law on civil service which was submitted for consideration at the government session was prepared by the interagency taskforce. It included researchers and experts, and the majority of them are not civil servants. The process was coordinated by the Labor and Social Security Ministry and the National Center of Legislation and Legal Research.

“There was a task to make civil service similar to, for example, military service, work out clear-cut and comprehensive requirements to this service, raise the prestige of state administration in general. As I am informed, a whole system of civil service has been built in the new law. It also envisages social and legal guarantees for civil servants commensurable with their responsibilities which are made as close to the responsibilities of the military as possible,” the president remarked.

Aleksandr Lukashenko wanted to be informed about all the proposals submitted for consideration in detail. He also asked the participants of the session to answer important questions concerning the applicability of the new law. “Please do not rewrite everything that we had in our history without a good thinking,” the head of state said.

He also asked about the efficiency of the efforts to raise the prestige of civil service, wanted the participants of the session to provide a general description of ethical requirements to civil servants, anti-corruption measures.