Education,
Mr. R. L.A. Hooghart, President, Confederation of Civil Service
Organizations(CLO), Mr. Michael Miskin, Treasurer, CLO, Mr. Kross, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Justice, Mr. Belfor, Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Labor, Mrs. Codfried-Kranenburg M.D. Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health and Mrs. Joyce Van Varsseveld, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Regional Affairs. I am grateful to Ambassador Norma Soekwandan, Surinamese Ambassador to Guyana and Mrs. Angela Bailey of the IDB Country Office who helped me to gain access. Snr. Koldo Echebarria / Ms. Ingrid Carlson IDB Office Washington, also facilitated access by providing me with a letter of introduction to the Suriname Country Office.
1. Executive Summary The Government of Suriname has developed a reform agenda. Commitment to the reform effort is evident at the leadership level and is underpinned by support from internal and external stakeholders. President Rualdo Venetiaan of Suriname is Chairman of the Commission for Public Service Reform. The government’s engagement of its stakeholders to reach consensus regarding an appropriate reform strategy reinforces the reform impulse. The MHA Report: National Seminar on Strategic Framework for Governance: Towards Consensus Building and Performance Enhancement for Public Sector Reform
(October 22 and 23, 2003) explicates the reform impulse and the
government’s efforts to forge partnerships towards creating the reform ethos: “ the process of change will mainly relate to the human resources within the government machinery, the Civil Service, that to an important extent is the foundation on which the public service rests” (2003:8). “Civil Service management”, a component of the reform agenda, addresses the modernization of the legal framework for the CSS [The Personnel Act, 1985], and in its broadest sense, [the work organization and employment management subsystems] my emphasis. There is also a vision to optimize human resources, “current human resource capacity should be fully utilized” (op cit: 96). The reform imperative, “reformulation of civil servants’ duties” has implications for other human resource management (HRM) subsystems, namely, performance management, professional development management and human resource (HR) planning subsystems.
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