BY GODWIN EKOYO
Governor David Umahi on Monday at Silicon Valley, Ochudo Centenary City, Abakaliki, flagged off a-3-day training workshop for the permanent secretaries in Ebonyi State.
The training workshop organized by Ebonyi government in conjunction with Industrial Training Funds (ITFS) was said to be basically for the training the State Permanent Secretaries on capacity building to enhance productivity in service delivery.
Declaring the training workshop open, Governor Umahi, represented by his Deputy, Barr. Eric Kelechi Igwe, stood in by the Secretary to the State Government and Coordinating Commissioner, Chief Kenneth Ugbala, commended the ITFs for the workshop, and said the training would go long way in correcting some challenges facing various ministries in the state.
"I want to thank the ITFs in a special way for this beautiful initiative. I thank you for establishing ITFs office in Ebonyi State. This will help in cementing your partnership and relationship with Ebonyi State government.
"To the Permanent Secretaries, this is one of trainings that's very important to the state government. I want to point it out that the challenges we are having in our system or civil service system today is because the handing over the process of the service to the young ones is decaying. Sometimes, I will get worried and by the time all these sets of permanent secretaries leave service; we wouldn't have other set of people that will comfortably take over from them,Where you will see some level twelve (12'L) answering names but they can't prepare memos. It calls for worries, hence the need for this training," he said.
The governor charged the permanent secretaries to extend the knowledge they would gain from the workshop to directors and managing directors in the various ministries and assured the state government of his continual support in giving them the best.
"You're now undergoing training to train others because if we allow the system to decay we will be the one to suffer it. Sometimes they will say that politicians are the challenges, but the real owners of ministries are the permanent secretaries. By implications they are the accounting officers of the ministries. Government can rule with the permanent secretaries alone.
"We have the best of permanent secretaries in Ebonyi State and that's why they can be compared to ministers in Federal ministries. The essence of this training will be the result of what we are going to have after the training and after this training we are going to step it down to our directors in our various ministries."
