To curb malpractices: Public service ministry to launch certificate authentication platform.

MINFOPRA boss, Joseph Le, made the announcement in Yaounde yesterday, Wednesday February 1, at the start of the ministry’s one-day annual conference. The conference was organised to debrief officials of the central and external services on its activities for the year 2023. The event held under the theme: “Quality and proximity public service”.

According to Minister Le, the announced platform, whose coming has been long envisaged, will be put in place to enable the structure easily verify certificates of applicants, which is one of the basics in the recruitment chain.

“This year, we will be working hard to put in place a platform for the authentication of certificates and diplomas because we still have a lot of problems in that regard. We are not allowed to recruit a young man for instance without being sure that his diploma is tangible,” the minister said in an interview.

The minister also revealed that the facility, when introduced, will better the verification procedure, which, till present day, takes between six months to one year and in some extreme situations, could extend to two years. This, he said, is due to administrative procedures involving the various institutions issuing the certificates to the various candidates concerned with the recruitment exercises.

“Until today, we need to write to those institutions that issue the certificates and it still takes a whole lot of time; six months, one year and even two years waiting for response from those structures. That is why we are working hard so that this platform will enable us to have everything on the same platform,” Minister Le stated.

“When that will be achieved, when an individual comes for recruitment and there is a need for us to verify documents, we just go into the platform and check. That will take not more than a day to do. Even some minutes. That is why we are saying it’s good for us to ameliorate the services that we are rendering to our public and users to be able to have a new administration that is considered, accepted by our compatriots,” the minister reiterated.

Consolidating massive decentralisation strive

Apart from the certificate authentication platform, which could stand out as one of the ministry’s major projects for the year, the structure also focuses on consolidating its vast decentralisation strive within its administration.

According to an announcement by Minister Le Wednesday, the structure will create numerous major avenues during the year geared towards having direct contacts with users of the public service ministry in the 10 regions of the country.

“We want to establish direct contact with our users. By doing so, we will like to go on the field in all the 10 regions and listen to them, collect their needs and try to build something that will enable us to be sure that what we are doing is done after taking into consideration the preoccupations of the users,” Minister Le declared.

The decentralisation process, he stated, will also be fostered in the course of the year through the completion of works on the new civil servants’ management system, SIGIPES, platform. SIGIPES, first launched over three years ago, is used in the rapid treatment of documents of Cameroonian civil servants.

“This year, we will also need and have to complete the works on the new SIGIPES. We started works on it already but I have noticed that we need to accelerate the process so that this year, we will complete the exercise,” Le said.  

Staff urged to maintain impressive working spirit

Wednesday’s ceremony also had Minister Joseph Le praising the workers of the Ministry of Public Service and Administrative Reforms for huge efforts invested last year in bettering public service delivery despite multiple challenges.

He encouraged the workers to maintain the much-applauded efforts which saw the ministry among other things, successfully managing the teacher’s crisis early last year and putting in place public service delivery facilities at the level of the regions.

These efforts, Minister Le reiterated, helped consolidate the ministry’s strive towards providing quality public service delivery as prescribed by the Prime Minister, Head of Government, Chief Dr. Joseph Dion Ngute, and the Head of State, President Paul Biya.