30,000 Public Sector Workers to Be Cut by 2012

The government plans to trim about 30,000 jobs at the nation's 305 state-run corporations and institutions by 2012 as part of efforts to speed up public sector restructuring, Yonhap News reported Friday, quoting a ranking official at the presidential office of Cheong Wa Dae.

The proposed staff reduction, if implemented, would affect about 11.6 percent of some 259,000 public sector workers.

"Following the outbreak of the global economic crisis, a large-scale restructuring is inevitable for a fresh takeoff of the South Korean economy, apart from the job sharing scheme in the private sector," the Cheong Wa Dae official was quoted as saying.

"Detailed payroll cuts in the public sector will be finalized by individual corporations and institutions by the end of this month."

The ratio of job cuts will vary from 10 percent to 15 percent, depending on the circumstances of the concerned entities, he noted.

Besides the workforce reduction, public corporations will be asked to take other measures to downsize their organizations and improve business efficiency, he said.

Since its inauguration in February last year, the Lee administration has striven to overhaul the bloated structure of state-run enterprises and other public entities accused of loose and inefficient management and wasteful spending of taxpayers' money.