The Head of the Civil Service, Joe Issachar, has asked civil servants seeking political office to resign immediately in accordance with the constitution and the service's own code of conduct. He cautioned also that once they resign they can never be accepted back even when they have quit politics. Mr Issachar said this in an interview with the Times in Accra on Friday, to clarify the position of the service on its members intending to enter politics. So far, he said, three top civil servants from the Castle, the Ministry of Communication and Ministry of Transportation have resigned to contest as Parliamentary candidates in this year's election. He could not immediately recall their names. He said measures had been instituted to ensure that no civil servant enters politics without the knowledge of the service, adding that any member who decides to contest for political office on the ticket of any political party without formally notifying the service commits a serious misconduct and will be automatically dismissed. Mr Issachar said apart from the constitution which bars civil servants from contesting elections on political party tickets, section 12 (1) of the civil service code specifically bars them from entering politics. He, however drew a distinction between civil and public servants, saying the public often misconstrue public servants to be the same as civil servants and keep questioning the basis for such people to enter politics. "We have close to 16 public services that are not part of the civil service, thus the public must first find out the service that the person belongs to", he advised. Mr Issachar explained that because of the critical role that civil servants play in the functioning of government machinery, the drafters of the constitution in their wisdom determined that civil servants should not take part in politics. He said since the civil service keeps the integrity of government, it is constitutionally mandated to stay neutral and assist whichever government is in power to succeed. Other categories of institutions whose members are barred from seeking political office include the electoral commission, police, the military and chiefs. Source: The Ghanaian Times