Civil Service in Amhara National Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

This paper assesses the development of the Civil Service in Amhara National Regional State, Ethiopia in terms of its size; Civil Service to Population ratio; Male to Female ratio; composition of the Civil Service by sex, type, Ethnic; perceived reasons that attract Civil Servants to join the Civil Service and problems of the Civil Service. In order to address those issues, the research used primary and secondary data; and the findings of the  paper indicates that the size of the Civil Service has increased by 287% from 2003/04 to 2012/13; the ratio of the Civil Servants to the regional population has improved from 1:178 in 1996/97 to 1:81 in 2012/13, but  the composition of Males and Females was almost constant that ranged between 62.55% to 68% for males and 32.29% to 37.45% for females from 2006/07 to 2012/13 respectively; Majority of the Civil Servants are from the Amhara, Agew, Oromo, and Tigrie Ethnic in the order of their size in the population; and lastly the Civil Service is characterized by prevalence of poor salary structure, weak working culture, weak sense of serving, weak reward system, favouritism, politicization, high rate of turnover, role ambiguity, and corruption. In order to strengthen the Civil Service, the paper recommend re-assessment of the salary structure and making active the bi annual horizontal increase of salary; give continual training to solve the problem of attitude, and sense of serving; and lastly all the Civil Service works have to be done only in lines with rules, regulations and proclamation set for this purpose.

Keywords: Civil Service, Civil Servants, & Amhara National Regional State