Organisation of Education and Training of Statutory Officers

There are 25 thousand statutory officers working in state institutions today. Almost half of them are officers holding the lowest ranking (C-level) positions who face dangerous emergency situations requiring specific knowledge and skills every day. In view of the importance of the functions performed by these officers, their training and competence development should be given special attention, therefore the National Audit Office has performed an audit assessing organisation of training of statutory officers of all levels and management of resources allocated for this purpose.

Auditor General Giedrė Švedienė commented on the audit findings as follows: “Statutory vocational training institutions do not train a sufficient number of officers required for certain statutory bodies, some officers enter the service without any professional qualification and lacking skills needed to do their job.”

The audit revealed that the number of officers prepared for bodies under the authority of the Fire and Rescue Department and the Police Department in 2012 accounted for as little as 11 per cent of all vacant positions.

A number of other lowest ranking officers enter the service in a statutory body immediately after the graduation from a secondary school, without having acquired any professional qualification. Some of them are trained only half a year or more after having entered the service. Training of part of officers lasts from 10 days to 3 months, although the established minimum professional training period is 1 year.

Despite the importance of the functions performed by statutory officers, competence development for all level statutory officers is not receiving enough attention. Unlike in the case of other civil servants, there is no body coordinating or evaluating the process of development of statutory officers’ competence at the national level. Competence development services are provided to a number of officers by institutions whose activities are not related to the training of civil servants.

Funds allocated to vocational training institutions which prepare future statutory officers are not linked to the planned number of officers. After the graduation from statutory vocational training institutions, policemen, fire fighters and rescuers, border guards have to serve 5 years, otherwise they are supposed to reimburse their training costs. Training costs of one border guard covered by the State total LTL 23 thousand on average,  training of one policeman costs LTL 17 thousand and one fire fighter – LTL 8 thousand. Costs of training of other statutory officers are not estimated and they are not required to serve a certain time period or to reimburse their training costs in case of failure to serve the established time.

The National Audit Office put forward recommendations to the Government, Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Justice, Prison Department, and to the Police Department.