Jobs plan saves just two

Relevant offers

Politics

Brownlee turns up heat on council over rebuild Agency mulled to run emergency 111 system MPs' travel bills leap during election Remedial work for navy's problem ship Wait for new oil law before awarding permits, Govt urged TVNZ included in police Electoral Act investigation Sea law 'an environmental risk' Govt defends 50c an hour minimum wage lift Maori queue-jumping for SOEs raised More claims about PM's man and doco funding

At least 1500 public service jobs are at risk, but a flagship scheme to save many of them has rescued just two.

The Government confirmed yesterday that only two people were known to have found work through the scheme, set up in May to take the sting out of big state sector job cuts.

It was supposed to prevent specialised knowledge, skills and experience being lost from the public sector and reduce redundancy costs. Departments with vacancies are expected to draw from the pool where possible.

State Services Minister Tony Ryall conceded that interest in the pool  open to people before they are laid off  was "very low".

So far 186 people public servants had been made redundant since March.

Mr Ryall would ask the State Services Commission to increase monitoring to get a more accurate picture of how many people were being redeployed.

The Public Service Association estimates 1500 jobs in the core public service  most of them in Wellington  have already been earmarked to go.

About 500 more jobs have been signalled to be cut from the wider public sector, such as TVNZ and New Zealand Post.

Several departments have announced big cuts as a result of spending restrictions and restructuring.

Mr Ryall indicated he was disappointed by the take-up rate, and said he would seek ways to improve the scheme if needed. "I just think that many people would have thought it was an option that would be worth the public service using.

"As we said at the time [it was launched], the PSA wanted to work with the Government on this and it's obviously a process that we can look to improve as need be."

Fifty agencies were taking part in the redeployment network and 35 staff were registered.

Labour MP Grant Robertson branded the scheme a charade. The low success rate indicated several hundred public servants would be left jobless, despite Government promises to shift staff to the front line, he said.

Mr Robertson, the Wellington Central MP and Labour's state services spokesman, said: "This was trumpeted as something that was going to help avoid redundancies and clearly, it's not doing that.

"While it sounds good in principle, it's not actually achieving anything much to ensure that we retain good talent and look after people who have lost their jobs."

PSA secretary Brenda Pilott could not say why the take-up rate was so low.

"I'm unsure of whether that is simply that there are not enough jobs to redeploy people into or whether departments are simply not making use of the provisions that are there."

- © Fairfax NZ News