Planning Ministry Studies Proposal to Redistribute Government Employees to Address Service Shortages

The Ministry of Planning is studying a proposal to redistribute government and service departments according to spatial and sectoral criteria and priorities and in successive work phases, contributing to facilitating citizens' access to basic services, especially health, upbringing and education. The Director General of the Regional and Local Development Department in the ministry, Mohammed Mohsen Al-Sayed, reported, citing the official newspaper, that the proposal aims to enhance the role of sub-districts and districts as service and development centers, alongside supporting the policy of spreading spatial development and curbing the severe concentration of jobs and services in major city centers, as well as stimulating local economic development by enhancing the role of government services in supporting productive and investment activities. He indicated that the proposal, which will be implemented in successive work phases, relies on redistributing employees from institutions that include large numbers of them to their counterparts suffering from a shortage therein, and by adopting the spatial dimension, contributing to consolidating the foundations of comprehensive and sustainable national development. Al-Sayed affirmed that spatial planning represents an approach that balances the criteria of economic efficiency and social justice in distributing investments and the fruits of development in the regions of the single country, noting that spatial planning focuses on the comparative advantage in distributing economic activities and events across governorates, and represents the optimal approach to dealing with reducing the spatial disparity in the levels of economic and urban development in various regions of the country. He pointed out that spatial development policies are heading towards supporting small and medium-sized cities, as well as villages in the countryside, through developing what currently exists or establishing new cities and centers, which are carried out based on approved planning standards, with the aim of easing pressure on major cities and investing in other less fortunate areas in obtaining the fruits of development distributed in various environments, contributing to achieving demographic and social stability according to the spatial comparative advantages of the governorate, district and sub-district.