Nearly half of the Azores’ civil servants will be of retirement or pre-retirement age in six years. The information was provided by the Regional Secretary for Finance, Planning, and Public Administration, Duarte Freitas, who announced a working group to study and plan the rejuvenation of the Regional Public Administration.
“Of the 19,200 workers distributed between direct and indirect administration and the region’s three hospitals, by 2030, 5,828 workers will have reached or exceeded the age of 66, representing 30% of the total active workforce,” said Duarte Freitas, quoted in a press release, adding, on the same date, that around 9,000 workers will be aged 60 or over, corresponding to 48% of the total universe.
At the end of the third meeting of the Public Administration Consultative Council since its reactivation, he revealed that a working group will be set up to project the “guidelines and needs of public employment” in 2030, which should present its conclusions by the end of the first quarter of 2025.

“We’ve set up a working group that is going to carry out a detailed survey of the needs of the various services, but also study what is happening in other national and international areas, trying to foresee what the major guidelines and needs will be in terms of public employment,” he explained.
Duarte Freitas says, “The containment of the size of the civil service has to be balanced with the replacement of workers to maintain the quality and continuity of public services.” “This is a balance that cannot be achieved without planning and strategy,” he stressed.

Four-day work week
At the same meeting, it was decided to set up a working group to implement the pilot project for the four-day working week and teleworking in the Regional Public Administration.
“A working group has been set up that will design the pilot projects for teleworking and the four-day week, in essence, for flexible working, so that throughout 2025 they can be implemented in the services that will be defined and then at the end of the year we can draw conclusions,” said the head of the Public Administration portfolio.
According to Duarte Freitas, some regional public administration services already have a flexible working system, such as the Regional Statistics Service, where 20% of employees are teleworkers.

in Diário Insular, José Lourenço-director

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