Finance Minister Louis Paul Motaze
By Lawrence Konfor
The Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motazé, has ordered the immediate cessation of services rendered by retired agents and personnel without a formal connection to his ministerial department. The instruction, contained in a correspondence dated May 15, 2025, is sent to the inspectors and general directors of the ministry.”It has come to my attention that you continue to employ people who have no connection with the administration and to keep in post agents who have already reached the statutory age limit and been allowed to claim their pension rights””, writes the minister, pointing to practices contrary to the regulations in force.This decision follows an audit carried out by the Human Resources Department in the central and devolved services of the ministry. The Minfi (Ministère des Finances) deplores the non-respect of the regulations relating to the end of service of public servants.Louis Paul Motazé relies in particular on the Prime Minister’s circular of November 2015, which specifies that”ministers must ensure that civil servants under their authority who have been allowed to claim their pension rights effectively and promptly leave the service and, when they hold positions of responsibility, are replaced by their staff who are legally required to act as interim”. He also cites an internal note that he himself signed on January 12, 2022, in which he already denounced the presence of “intruders” in the services.”It has come to my attention that there are intruders who stay permanently in your departments. These people are regularly involved in the processing of files even though they have no established connection with the administration, thus leading to abuses that are generally attributed to the Ministry of Finance””, he recalled at the time.
Despite this alert, the phenomenon persists, justifying the firmness of your employee in the new correspondence. The minister thus orders his collaborators to take immediate measures:”Please release the personnel mentioned, all other business being suspended”.This release is part of a broader context of cleaning up the civil service, where compliance with age standards and administrative status is being increasingly scrutinized.