Minister sees benefits in central government hiring

THE HAGUE – Home Affairs Minister Guusje ter Horst wants a review of how the government hires its workers. The minister points out that there are currently 5,000 different functions and ranks in the civil services, while 50 could do. Instead of departments each hiring its own staff, preventing the reassignment of a civil servant to another department, the minister suggests that the central government take over ‘Human Resources’ for all departments. According to her, civil servants would have less ground for raising objections to a transfer. The suggestions are being aired at a time when there is talk of reducing the government’s work force by 12,800 employees by 2012. That number is being disputed, however. The actual reduction may be only 6,000 because there has been an increase of over 6,600 civil service employees to the current total.