NAIROBI, 18 May 2005 (IRIN) - South African officials are due to provide technical and financial aid to public service institutions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over a three-year period, a government minister said on Tuesday.

Bua News, a South African news agency, quoted the minister for public service and administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, as telling parliament that the move to reform the Congolese public sector was to "set that country on the way to realising its full potential".

She said experts would be sent to the Congo to help rebuild the country's "nearly non-existent public sector".

The DRC is emerging from years of civil war that has seen the collapse of public infrastructure and services.

Fraser-Moleketi told parliament that the aid would include auditing the number of public servants on the government payroll to help with salary administration, human resource planning and management.

The South African experts would also help with anti-corruption measures, and the setting up of a national public administration training institute, she said.

"These are necessary preconditions to building an effective service delivery machinery," she was quoted as saying.