Keep tabs on state workers

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced Tuesday that 24 public employees rated as idle and incompetent were dismissed, suspended or just quit. It was the first result of the city government’s personnel reform.
There are several expressions to describe our country’s public employees ― they stick to safe choices, they believe their jobs are guaranteed until retirement and they have a passive attitude toward their positions. That is because public employees have been so focused on defending each other, allowing incompetent workers or underperformers to keep their jobs.
The dismissed employees are so pathetic that hard working employees have been criticized as well.
Personnel reform in government started early this year in Ulsan city and spread to other local governments, including Seoul. The local government said it would retrain the incompetent employees and let them go back to their original offices if they showed progress. If they failed to show progress, they would be dismissed. Employee work attitudes in such organizations have changed and they showed strong determination, according to the local governments.
It is true that for any organization to progress, it needs strict standards for punishment and reward.
It is a principle of nature that rotten parts should be removed for the whole organization to be healthy. Otherwise, the whole organization will become idle and decay.
But what about our public employees? According to the Board of Audit and Inspection, many public employees kept working although they were not qualified for the job. It is natural for people to be enraged.
The Roh administration increased the number of public employees by 50,000 and plans to hire more.
What kind of government is this? It should first get rid of incompetent public employees and then raise the efficiency of the organizations. Still, the government ignores these issues and keeps increasing the number of staff.
That is why public employees believe their jobs are secure until retirement and why more and more people apply for the state exam to become public employees.
The City of Seoul decided to select idle workers early every year during the regular promotion period. That is a very appropriate decision. Other local governments and ministries should adopt that policy as soon as possible.