Official report says Transport Ministry overstaffed, recommends changes

AMMAN – The Transport Ministry has an abundance of staff and the qualifications of a number of its employees are irrelevant to the jobs they are doing, a recent report prepared by the Ministry of Public Sector Development said. 

The report, conducted by experts from the ministry, the Civil Service Bureau and the General Budget Department, also found that there are jobs in the Transport Ministry that do not suit some regulatory units and should be cancelled or their holders should be transferred to other units.

The analysis of the human resources status at the Transport Ministry comes nearly a week after the Ministry of Public Sector Development released a similar report on the Tourism Ministry as part of a project to analyse whether human resources at government departments match the type of duties and responsibilities of their entities. 

The experts studied the organisational structure of the ministries and the qualifications of cadres to assess the relevance of such skills and experiences to their missions, Minister of Public Sector Development Khleef Al Khawaldeh said. 

The report on the Transport Ministry was referred to the prime minister with recommendations on how to improve the performance of human resources, Khawaldeh said. 

The ministry only needs specialised employees in the field of transport and cadres with the capability to develop the work of the agency, said the report.

The team also advised that the ministry control granting employees long-term unpaid leaves as it causes shortages in skilled staff, particularly in technical fields, adding that the ministry should not have any vacancies for certain jobs for the next three years. 

Khawaldeh said the experts also studied the services provided by the Transport Ministry and found that five services should no longer remain offered. 

Four of the five services should be the responsibility of the Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission (CARC), while the fifth should be the duty of the Jordan Maritime Commission (JMC), the report said.

The minister said that one of the most important recommendations was the need to merge the three regulatory commissions under the jurisdiction of the Transport Ministry –– the Land Transport Regulatory Commission, CARC and the JMC –– into one entity. 

The project to match human resources with the duties of government departments is part of an executive plan to develop the performance of the public sector for 2014-2016, which Khawaldeh said aims at reshaping the government sector to become more qualified and efficient.