For sometime now, large numbers of civil servants have been resigning mainly on economic grounds and the majority of them have been heading to Australia.

Now to motivate the civil servants and in part to stem the flow, a Sixth Pay Commission has been constituted with the DHI Chairman Dasho Ugen Chewang as the head and the same members as the last Fifth Pay Commission.

According to reliable sources the main agenda of the Sixth Pay Commission will be to give a decent pay hike to civil servants to motivate them. It is hoped that once this happens the attrition rate will also decrease.

Meanwhile, in a sign of the times a record number of 677 civil servants have resigned from the civil service in a period of less than two months from 1st January to 17th February 2023.

To get some perspective in the whole of 2022 a total of 1,488 civil servants had resigned while 892 had resigned in 2021.

What is a matter of concern is that the 677 voluntary resignations in a month and half of 2023 is more than the voluntary resignations in the entire years of 2020 at 542 resignations, 2019 with 568 resignations, 2018 with 609 resignations and 2017 with 471 resignations.

In this less than two-month period of 2023 a total of 823 people have separated from the civil service in total of which 677 have voluntarily resigned. 15 have retired, 75 have completed their contract, 14 have taken the early retirement scheme, 1 has been terminated, 2 were compulsorily retired and 3 died.

Apart from the 823 separations there are another 278 who have gone on extraordinary leave or EOL.

Of the 823 who separated from the service in the last month and a half, the largest group is teachers at 243 of them.  Another 104 teachers have taken Extraordinary Leave (EOL) meaning a total of 347 teachers are currently out due to separation and EOL.

In the whole of 2022 a total of 778 teachers had separated from the service and 197 had gone on EOL.

The second biggest occupation group that has separated in 2023 is the medical and health group where around 98 of them have separated from the group and another 46 have gone on EOL bringing the total to 144 of them.

In this group 2 medical doctors have separated while another 3 have gone on EOL. 39 nurses have separated and 16 have gone on EOL.

1 staff from emergency medical services has separated.

Other staff who have left are radiologists, laboratory staff, therapists, technicians, diagnostic staff, etc.

In 2022 a total of 270 of them have separated from the group and another 84 had gone on EOL.

22 Engineers including some road inspectors have separated in 2023 and another 14 have gone on EOL.

35 people from the Forest Services have left and another 8 have gone on EOL.

11 ICT services staff have separated while another 6 have gone on EOL.

23 revenue services officers mainly from the Department of Revenue and Customs have separated from service. This comes at a time when it the department has to process and collect taxes.

18 from the Financing, Accounting and Budget services have separated while another 5 have gone on EOL.

5 from the planning services have separated while another 5 are on EOL.

23 from program services are separated while another 6 are on EOL.

2 from the survey engineering services have separated while another 4 are on EOL.

10 have left from the Agricultural Production and Regulatory Services and another 4 are on EOL.

4 Anti Corruption Officials have separated with 1 one EOL while another 6 have separated from Royal Audit Authority.

7 from specialist services who are highly trained technical people across agencies have separated.

8 people from HR Management have left while 3 are on EOL.

2 from legal services have left.

8 Immigration service people have left.

58 have left from administrative positions while 4 are on EOL.

52 have left from Technical Support Services. They are basic operators and technicians.

9 have left from statistical services with 1 on EOL.

7 have left from meteorology and hydrology services with 1 on EOL.

7 have left from sports services. 4 have left from aviation safety services.

There are more from other services.