The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF), Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, has said workers with Higher National Diploma (HND) must undergo one-year mandatory training before their conversion from Executive to Officers cadre.
This was contained in a statement issued from the office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation. Yemi-Esan on Saturday at a virtual interactive session with civil servants in commemoration of the 2024 Civil Service Week with the theme, “Educate an African Fit for the 21st Century: Building Resilient Education Systems for Increased Access to Inclusive, Life-long, Quality and Relevant Learning in Africa.”
‘’The one-year mandatory training program to bridge the gap between polytechnic awarded Higher National Diplomas and university degrees has been controversial between the National Universities Commission and the National Board for Technical Education.
A bill was passed at the Ninth National Assembly in 2021 to end the dichotomy but was not signed into law by the last administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Thus, NBTE, which regulates technical and vocational education, had to introduce what it describes as a one-year top-up programme which offers a platform for HND holders to level up towards obtaining a bachelor’s degree.
While fielding a question from one of the civil servants during the virtual meeting, Yemi-Esan, said, “The curriculum for HND and B.Sc holders were not the same, hence, HND graduates would have to undergo mandatory one-year training before conversion from Executive to Officers’ cadre.”
According to her, “PMS implementation has been cascaded to the Ministries, with the Permanent Secretaries serving as the primary drivers. She pointed out that core teams for its implementation have been duly constituted.
“In this regard, performance contracts are to be further cascaded down to the last officer in each MDA.
“This new system will assess each officer’s performance solely based on their respective Key Performance Indicators and it will enable tracking of job objectives across all MDAs.
“By implication, each officer across the Service can clearly link his goals and objectives with those of his department, those of the respective Ministry and the National KPIs.
She further stressed that the Office has fully digitalized all personal and policy files and is implementing digital transaction workflow processes, as all official correspondences, in the form of memos and internal and external circulars, are now being processed electronically through the Enterprise Content Management solutions.
