Gov’t to hire decent part-time government officials

The Security and Public Administration Ministry said on Monday that it would make a preliminary announcement for the revision of the Decree on the Appointment of Public Officials, which includes the rationale behind the employment of part-time government officials on Tuesday.

According to the revision, newly recruited part-time officials work four hours a day and 20 hours a week in principle. Depending on the nature of assigned work, they can shorten or extend their working hours within the five-hour range per week. They can work in the mornings, afternoons, or evenings, or every other day. They will be Level 7 or lower, but if their expertise is in law or analysis, the central government can employ part-time officials higher than Level 7.

Around 3,600 government officials are either full-time government officials who have changed to part-time positions for child care or contract part-time officials. Part-time officials who will start working from next year are different from previous ones in that they can choose when they will work in advance. They will be treated like full-time regular government service employees. The minimum service requirement, which is necessary for promotion, will be counted in proportion to the number of their working hours. Theoretically, government officials are not allowed to have an additional job. Unless it undermines fairness and interferes with their work, however, they can have an additional job with a permit from the head of their organization.

Part-time officials, however, cannot subscribe to the Government Employees Pension System because the Public Officials Pension Act defines that subscribers shall be “full-time” government officials. For such reason, part-time officials must subscribe to National Pension Service. If part-time officials want to change to full-time positions, they have to go through a recruitment process for a new government official. The government has a principle that those who want a full-time position should apply for a process for entry-level or experienced official like now, and is working on detailed measures.

After revising relevant laws including the compensation rules on government officials by the end of this year, the government will conduct a demand survey and hire part-time government officials from next year. A total of 4,000 positions will be available including 1,700 in the central government and 2,300 in local governments from next year through 2017. The recruiting will cover the areas of interpretation/translation, civil service, enforcement against illegal parking, document management, and library/museums, etc.