Human Resources Development And The Utilisation Of Expatriates In Namibia's Public Sector

ABSTRACT

This paper looked at human resource development and the utilisation of expatriates in

Namibia's Ministries of Health and Social Services and Basic Education, Sports and

Culture. The two ministries are among those which were projected to continue to

suffer from scarcities of skilled and professional human resources by the National

Planning Commission (NPC, 2002). The broad objective of the study is to establish

the progress made in addressing skills shortages and replacement of expatriates in the

two government ministries. The study has used secondary data obtained through the

study of documents and primary data generated through interviews. The paper

concludes that there will continue to be shortages of medical doctors, pharmacists and

other specialists in the country as also stated in the Namibia Vision 2030. Government

is therefore urged to take policy measures that can improve the current forecasted

future. In education, the study confirms that since independence, there have been

major improvements in indicators such as school enrolment rates, learners to teacher's .

ratio, adult literacy rates, and development of infrastructure. However, the challenges

facing education is of having too many teachers in the wrong specialisations. The

ministry has gone a step further by articulating in a policy statement what are the

needs in terms of teacher specialisation. It is rather too early to tell if this policy will

be followed.