Pretoria - The Department of Correctional Services has lifted a two year moratorium on filling of vacancies by advertising 380 critical vacancies on Sunday.
The 380 posts were advertised in three Sunday newspapers and on the departmental website - www.dcs.gov.za as well as on the public Service and Administration website - www.dpsa.gov.za.
Correctional Services National Commissioner, Tom Moyane said funds for the filling of essentially supervisory, middle management and professional positions were sourced from the natural attrition of staff in the department.
He said annually the department loses an average of 1200 staff members due to terminations that include resignations, deaths or dismissals. In total Correctional Services' approved establishment has 41 500 posts and currently has a staff complement of 40 676, showing a 2 percent vacancy rate.
"The post advertisements carried in this weekend's newspapers are just a beginning of a sustained effort to ensure that Correctional Services has appropriate human resources to deliver on its services delivery targets," Moyane said.
Among the key senior positions to be filled are Medical Doctors, Pyschologists, Nurses and Heads of Correctional Centres. About R70 million will be used to fill these vacancies.
Moyane has given a directive to the management to start and complete the recruitment process within a period of two months, a real turn around considering the department's normal average of 3-6 months of recruitment processes.
To achieve the turn around key elements of the recruitment will be decentralised with Regional Commissioners and Chief Deputy Commissioners being champions of the process.
The urgency to fill these vacancies was discussed at an Executive Management meeting held last week. The meeting was attended by both the Minister of Correctional Services Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula as well as National Commissioner Moyane.
The advertising of the vacancies was the first step towards addressing vacancies in the department following the lifting of the moratorium instituted about two years ago to address rocketing personnel expenditure and to prevent unmanaged over expenditure emanating from the implementation of the Occupation Specific Dispensation (OSD) for Correctional Officials.
Due to the OSD related budget pressures the department over spent its Budget in the 2008/9 financial year by nearly half-a-billion rands.
