By Violet Osatohanmwen Obamwonyi
Edo State Government, not relenting in its effort to equip civil and public servants in the State for optimal service delivery to the citizens, has held a one-day workshop to engage stakeholders and obtain feedback on the implementation of the training calendar that would be operational in the State for the year 2023. The event which had Permanent Secretaries and Heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in attendance held at the John Odigie Oyegun Public Service Academy (JOOPSA), in Benin City.
In his welcome address, the Edo State Head of Service, Anthony Okungbowa Esq., reiterated the need for frequent training of public servants which has resulted in the establishment of the Academy by the current administration.
According to Okungbowa, “Like they say in computer language, garbage in, garbage out. It is what you give to the service in terms of intellectual resource property development that the service would give back.
“We as a government recognized that trainings are important and being the strategic service that we are, these trainings must be done systematically. It is on this basis that we decided to put this workshop together with the management of JOOPSA, to have a general idea on the areas that we need to organize trainings on.
“Conclusions as to what kind of calendar we should have, as far as trainings are concerned this year is our major task today. The essence of the exercise is to agree on the set of criteria that we would use in what will eventually be part of the training calendar that would detail courses in line with the needs of all MDAs”.
Okungbowa noted that the calendar would spell out the modus operandi for all trainings in the year 2023. He said: “The learning calendar would be our guide and we are not going to depart from it. It is my hope and expectation that you all would participate fully by giving your own inputs, suggestions and recommendations so that we can come to a conclusion that would help us grow as a service.”
Delivering an opening remark, the Managing Director, JOOPSA, Ms. Precious Imuwahen Ajoonu, assured participants that JOOPSA would continue to deploy the collective participation approach by engaging them from time to time to ensure everyone is on the same page in the transformation initiative of the Governor Obaseki-led administration.
According to Ajoonu, “On behalf of the JOOPSA team and our partner DAI, we want to thank you for your support; to have all of you from inception, reading through materials, validating our strategy plan with us, engaging us, telling us what your needs are, coming to us often to give suggestions, is truly commendable.
“We are really grateful and also solicit your support today. We are going to show you a list of competencies. Remember that this is a proposed calendar; it is not yet cast in stone. We really need your feedback on the calendar so that the final document would reflect and eventually meet all of our training needs.”
“The calendar is not just a calendar but one that is competency-based. It would spell out the skills, behaviour, abilities and functions needed to perform optimally in service”, Ajoonu added.
Also speaking at the workshop, the Country Director of DAI Global LLC, Dr. Joe Abah, commended the State Governor for setting up JOOPSA whose core function is to build the capacity of public servants in the State. Abah stressed on the core competencies clusters needed by public servants to be efficient and effective. Abah noted: “Obsolete skills need to be upgraded as modern service now requires public servants who are technologically savvy and performance driven to compete with their counterparts in the private sector”.
The highlight of the workshop was the presentation of the proposed JOOPSA Training Calendar for the year 2023 by Mrs. Douye Ikhumi, the Contracts and Consultancy Manager, DAI, while concrete and impactful inputs were made by participants.
