CHAPTER ONE:
ARTICLE
1- In order to rectify reform and improve the country’s administrative system,
organization and structure; to reduce the non-sovereign undertakings of the
government, and advance the
systems, methods, management of human resources, and regulations
(by-laws and directives), an Administrative High Council is set up with the
following competencies, mandates and authority:
A.
MEMBERSHIP:
1- The President or the Vice
President (as the Chairman of the Council),
2- Three ministers
(preferably from different sectors) to be nominated by the Cabinet,
3- Minister or the Head of
the executive agency concerned,
4- Head of the Plan and
Budget Organization, if the position has an incumbent appointed by the
President,
5- Secretary-General of the
State Administrative and Employment Affairs Organization, if the position has
an incumbent appointed by the President,
6- Four learned individuals
and experts on public administration and management, to be nominated by the
President,
7- Two provincial
governor-generals to be nominated by the President.
8- Two members of the
Islamic Consultative Assembly as observers to be selected by the Islamic
Consultative Assembly.
Decisions
approved by the Council will be binding upon ratification by the President.
Note:
Secretary-General of the State Administrative and Employment Affairs
Organization will serve as the Secretary of the Council and will be charged
with supervising the performance of its decisions.
B.
DUTIES AND AUTHORITIES
1.
To reform organizational structure of the country’s executive agencies, except
ministries, through merger, dissolution, and decentralization.
2.
To restructure the internal set-up of the ministries, review duties and
internal structure of organizations, state-owned enterprises and their
subsidiary companies in order to create organizational cohesion, and to
eliminate parallel, similar and duplicated functions.
3.
To separate line duties from staff functions of the ministries and to limit the
staff functions solely to sovereign undertakings and strategic affairs (policy
making, planning and monitoring), and delegating line functions of ministries
to the public agencies at the provincial and county levels.
4.
To decide on merging provincial and county administrative units of any single
ministry into one integrated unit.
5.
To identify and delegate transferable functions and duties of the executive
agencies to municipalities and non-public sector with the objective of releasing government from the burden
of unnecessary undertakings; to determine and establish workable relationship
between the administrative system and local Islamic councils at rural, county
and city levels.
6.
To carry out reform and re-engineering activities in the systems, methods and
operating procedures in practice throughout the country’s executive agencies
with the objective of simplifying the work procedures, and promoting
automation, while minimizing direct contact between public employees and the
clients of public agencies, securing clients’ satisfaction, reducing the
administrative costs and economizing the performance of public duties.
7.
To approve necessary programs for
enhancement of productivity and efficiency of manpower and management of
the executive agencies.
8.
To approve criteria and standards required to optimize the structure,
composition and distribution of manpower in the public sector.
9.
To approve criteria and standard operating procedures to deal with the manpower
of those agencies which upon the decisions of the Administrative High Council,
are merged, dissolved, divested, or whose functions are entrusted to other
agencies.
10.
To adopt criteria for optimal utilization of administrative space, relocation,
and provision of administrative buildings.
11.
To determine and propose resources required for realization of the programs for
transformation of the administrative system, as well as other approved programs
of the Council, which require new resources.
12.
To identify and promulgate the agencies assigned to undertake programs related to the government
activities concerning administrative system and executive affairs.
ARTICLE
2- In order to reduce the non-sovereign undertakings, to strengthen sovereignty
and supervision affairs of government, to promote effective participation of
people, private and cooperative sectors in public affairs, to clarify functions
and mandates of the national and provincial units in planning and
implementation and to lay the ground for proper realization of the targets and
objectives of the Third Plan, government is required to carry out the
structural reform in the government organizations taking into account the
following criteria:
A-
Taking note of the principles of interdependence, cohesiveness, integrity and
homogeneity of the public duties and functions.
B-
Integrating the processes relating to a distinct task within a single agency,
and making the activities goal-oriented.
C-
Eliminating unnecessary units, organizations, parallel duties and duplicated
functions of public agencies.
D-
Observing the principle of decentralization in distribution of national and
provincial functions; delimiting functions and missions of the national and the
staff units solely to exercise of sovereignty, policy-making, macro-planning,
directing, supervising and monitoring; and delegating the executive affairs and
functions to the provincial units.
E-
Avoiding expansion of the government organization with emphasis on down-sizing the
government bureaucracy from the bottom of the organizational pyramid up through
consolidation of all related activities of any ministry (except autonomous
enterprises) in a single provincial organization.
On the basis of the above
criteria, appropriate measures shall be taken to consolidate all the relevant
functions and duties of the following sectors into three ministries:
1. The energy affairs,
2. Agriculture, animal
husbandry, and rural development affairs
3. Industry and mining
affairs.
To
realize the intent of this Article, government is required to clearly identify
and redefine proper titles of the ministries and autonomous agencies that shall
be charged with the above duties, and to stipulate the extent and limits of the
missions, authorities; to enumerate the sovereign and non-sovereign
undertakings of each agency within the framework of its specific functions; and
to determine the manner by which their duties could be performed. Government if further charged with
preparing a time table within one month henceforth and shall take all the
necessary legal measures to implement this program.
ARTICLE
3-
A- To improve and optimize the
composition of manpower of the executive agencies, and to proportionally
distribute the manpower to various regions of the country, and to improve the
delivery of the public services, the State Administrative and Employment
Affairs Organization is required to prepare a comprehensive manpower program
for the public sector within the first six months of the current Plan and
submit it to the Cabinet for approval.
In doing so, the following criteria shall be met:
1. Total government employees
shall be reduced by five percent (5%) by the end of the Third Plan period
relative to the beginning of the
Plan.
2. Qualitative indices of the
government manpower, specifically the proportion of the specialized employees
to the total manpower as well as their educational composition shall be
improved.
3. Total new employment in the
public sector shall not exceed fifty percent (50 %) of the total number of
employees who quit their jobs.
B.
In order to reduce new employment and simultaneously meet the manpower
requirements of those executive agencies whose activities must be further
developed, the State Administrative and Employment Affairs Organization is
required to determine the excess manpower of the down-sizing agencies and
inform the agencies that are in need of new employees so that necessary
measures could be taken for inter-agency transfers.
Any transfer made in the same city
shall not require consent of the employees who are being transferred. But transfers from one city to another
should be administered with the consent of the effected employee(s).
C-
Ministries and government entities may redeem the services of the employees who
volunteer to quit their job, through payment of incentives in addition to the
lawful fringe payments and benefits.
D-
Beginning with the Third Plan, government is required to reform regulations
governing provision of salaries and fringe benefits which are the basis of
retirement deduction, by taking into account the median monthly payment in the
last two years prior to retirement for all retiring employees who meet the
requirements of the retirement law.
E-
Beginning with the Third Plan, government is required to pay severance to the
retiring permanent and formal employees who are subject to the “Law of
Harmonized System of Payment to the Government Employees and Academic Staff of
Universities and Institutions of Higher Education”, a sum equivalent to one
month per each year of employment, of the latest salary, allowances and the
fringe benefits.
F-
Government is required to adjust, during the term of the Third Plan, the number
of personnel of the public sector within the framework provided in Appendix (1)
of this Law.
G-
During the term of the Third Plan and at the beginning of each year, government
is required to increase salaries of all employees and wage-earners of all
fields of activities - regardless of the nature of their employment contracts-
proportionate to the inflation rate and at least equal to it. Should the growth of inflation exceed
the salary increase in such a way that the totally adjusted receipts of the
wage-earner be less that monthly inflation rate multiplied by the salary of the
last month of the previous year plus twelve times the salary of the last month
of that year, the balance then shall be paid to the employees within the first
quarter of the next year. This Item also applies to all retirement pensions and
annuitants.
The executive by-law of this
Article including the incentive, and promotion measures and other employment
benefits to be granted to the employees who will be transferred to other
localities, as well as other criteria related to redemption incentive and other
relevant matters shall be prepared
by the State Administrative and Employment Affairs Organization, and to be
approved by the Cabinet.