Close to 1000 civil servants have been acting in various positions in government for quite some time and now the Public Service Commission is embarking on an "on-off" exercise to regularize these positions.

Permanent Secretary for Public Service Parmesh Chand said the exercise will be undertaken for those who have been acting in positions for three months or more as at March 31st 2010.

Chand said normally, there is a three month time frame for acting appointments and within this time, the vacant positions are advertised, applications received, candidates short listed and final appointments made.

However, he said this obviously has not happened as they have many acting appointments for much longer than three months.

Chand said the benefits of the exercise is that long standing acting appointments would be confirmed, whereby "cleaning up" the backlog existing in this area and the confirmation of appointments would also encourage and motivate staff towards improved levels of efficiency.

The PSC has started to send out team of Officers to assist Ministries and Departments verify the cases and firm up respective submissions.

The PSC is expected to complete the exercise by June 30th.