Public servants face 10-week benchmarking deadline

PUBLIC servants face a 10-week deadline to prove hey have made improvements to work practices sufficient to warrant payment of the next round of benchmarking awards.

Close to €1 billion is due to be paid out from January 1, 2004, in the second installment under benchmarking, but employees must show by the end of October that they have introduced radical changes in terms of modernisation and flexibility before the payments will be approved.

Plans detailing how 27 Government departments and civil service branches will implement the changes, which they committed to under the Sustaining Progress partnership , were published yesterday.