Prague, June 28 (CTK) – The Czech law on the civil service that took effect one year ago in order to improve the position of civil servants unfortunately also decreased people’s interest to work for the state, which lacks mainly lawyers, economists and IT specialists, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) wrote on Tuesday.
“We have about 40 job vacancies, which is nearly 10 percent of all our positions,” Transport Ministry state secretary Tomas Cocka told the paper.
The Transport Ministry needs good engineers and lawyers who would be able to prepare the construction of new roads and oppose assertive construction firms, MfD writes.
The civil service law has stopped the common practice of new ministers replacing most of the ministerial staff after the general election. After the 2017 election, new ministers will be allowed to replace only about four officials – the spokesperson, the head of their office and two “political” deputy ministers.
In total, 69,000 clerks are subject to the civil service law that has been effective since July 2015. Deputy Interior Minister Josef Postranecky, who is in charge of the civil service, said the exact figures are not known, but approximately 5 percent of the positions are not occupied according to his estimate, which means about 3500 vacancies.
The paper writes that 3 percent of vacancies is common. As further 1000 positions are unoccupied due to the civil service law, amendments to the law are being considered, MfD writes.
Before the clerks pass a special administrative exam, their gross monthly salary is roughly 20,000 crowns, which is rather low, especially as most of the jobs are offered in Prague where both the costs of living and salaries are higher than in the rest of the country.
A possible recruitment benefit of up to 100,000 crowns might be an option to compensate the initial low pay that is discouraging, MfD writes.
Another problem is that the competition for a position in the state administration takes long and more flexible private companies manage to win over the skilled candidates in the meantime.
Moreover, the civil service law requires that all clerks have passed a secondary-school final exam. About 550 clerks have only elementary education or secondary education without a final exam. Most of them are employees of the Czech Social Security Administration, usually old ladies dealing with maternity leave and pension applications.
All these employees must leave by July 2017 according to the law. However, the Senate has proposed that the deadline be postponed until 2021 to give the clerks time to acquire the secondary-school final exam or go into retirement.
The Justice Ministry is seeking about 100 white-collar workers, especially lawyers. The most common reason why the ministry cancelled the competitions for jobs is that there were no bidders, MfD writes.
The Education Ministry needs lawyers, too. Deputy Education Minister Dana Prudikova said the ministry’s education section has been seeking nine lawyers who would work out education bills, but so far in vain.
The ministries have a high demand for university graduates and even experts in humanities for whom it is otherwise difficult to find jobs are missing. For example, the Defence Ministry is looking for political scientists. “Within the next two months, we will have up to ten vacant positions in the section of defence policy and strategy,” Deputy Defence Minister Jakub Landovsky said.
