A legislative committee agreed yesterday to an amendment to the Civil Service Performance Evaluation Act (公務人員考績法) that would require all government agencies to give between 1 percent and 3 percent of their staff a “C” grade in their annual evaluations.
After lengthy debate, members of the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee reached a consensus that the original version of the amendment — proposed by the Examination Yuan last month and requiring that all government agencies give at least 3 percent of their staffers a “C” grade — should be changed to a more lenient range of between 1 percent and 3 percent.
The legislative committee decided to make the change after the Taiwan Civil Servants Association, a non-profit organization established last year, lodged a series of protests against the draft amendment.
Association chairman Chen Chuan-ching (陳川青), a Taipei City government official, said Examination Yuan President John Kuan’s (關中) top-down decision on the 3 percent quota system would not help boost civil service efficiency as he has said, but would rather damage morale among public servants.
The Examination Yuan should work out standardized assessment criteria for public servants, he said, adding that it would be more reasonable to stipulate that anyone who fails to meet the criteria be given a “C” grade rather than forcing government agencies to give at least 3 percent of their staffers a “C” in their yearly evaluations whether they deserve it or not, Chen said.
The passed amendment also stipulated that no more than 5 percent of staffers of any government agency should be given a top “excellent” grade in their yearly appraisals, while the number of staffers to receive a second-best “A” grade should not exceed 65 percent.
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