In-service training in Turkish municipality and the case study on Konya Metropolitian Municipality

Municipalities are public institutions that are responsible for meeting common needs of local public. On the other hand, as undertaking the investments of substructure and superstructure, municipalities undertake substantial tasks on achieving national developmental objectives. Because of the lower level qualities of municipality staffs, it is hard to say that the municipalities are capable of achieving their tasks, either in terms of meeting the needs of local public or in terms of achieving national developmental objectives. There are many reasons for their inability of producing service at optimal level. The first one is the lower level quality of the personnel. Because, in our country, there is no specialised educational institution on developing this personnel. Thus, municipalities meet personnel needs from general educational institutions. Because of lack of continuality on in-service training (service training) for the personnel hired from general educational institutions, services can not be carried out effectively and productively. Moreover, in determining the tasks and responsibilities of municipalities, social, economic and demographic characteristics of the target groups haven't been considered. As a result of this, all the municipalities have been submitted to the same tasks and responsibilities. But, because of the major amount of the municipalities are in small size, their lack of material resources to provide service and their lack of qualitative personnel, prevent them from providing effective and productive services. Our study, named as İn-Service Training İn Turkish Municipality, consists of three parts. İn the first part, in-service training has been evaluated in general perspective. İn the second part, education of the municipal staff in Turkey has been investigated within the comparison with some of the western countries, and in the final part, in-service training activities of the municipal staffs in Turkey has been tried to put forward, based on the case study of Konya Metropolitan Municipality. At the end of the study, discussible suggestions have been presented.