No fewer than one hundred and four Local Government Staff in Lagos State are jostling to break the long period of stagnation in their career progression and promotion.

The officers who have been on grade level zero seven for years have remained in the same bar as they lacked the necessary academic qualification to enable them progress in their career.

They were participants at the Public Service Staff Development Centre, PSSDC, Magodo, Lagos, undergoing a nine-month intensive training programme that will qualify them to obtain a certificate in Local Government Administration to break the jinx of not progressing above grade level zero seven.

Correspondent Jide Alli-balogun who was at opening ceremony of the training reports that the participants were drawn from the twenty local government areas of the state.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the twenty-sixteen Certificate Course in Local Government Administration, Director General, Public Service Staff Development Centre,PSSDC, Olubunmi Fabamwo, said the Local Government as the tier closest to the people requires effective service delivery by the staff as that was the yardstick for measuring the performance of government.

Fabamwo said as such, Local Government staff must possess the right knowledge, skills and attitude to enable the delivery of essential social services to the people, it was for this reason that successive state governments had continuously been developing local government staff to fulfill this mandate.

According to her, the nine months programme is a specially designed in-service capacity development programme to assist the movement of qualified local government staff on the clerical cadre into the executive cadre, and an appropriate foundation for participants who possess the required capacity but who may be hindered by the qualifications they joined the service with to build on their educational qualifications and advance their careers.

According to her, the course had been designed to equip the staff with skills necessary for the efficient and effective performance of their job, saying the staff would undergo a four-week attachment programme in any local government other than their own, advising them to display excellent academic and moral standards throughout the duration of the course.

She warned that the centre placed a high premium on hard work, diligence and punctuality and to sit for the two examinations designed for the programme, the participants must achieve eighty percent class attendance.

Declaring the course open, Chairman of Lagos State Local Government Service Commission, Babatunde Rotinwa noted that the course was made possible because the state government has continued to place a premium on local government administration which has led to the Unified Local Government Service.

Rotinwa, a former Head of Service, urged participants to make good use of the opportunity to move up the ladder in their career.

It is hoped that at the end of the course, participants who had been longing to move from their present job career of Clerical cadre to Executive cadre.