The B.C. government is defending its offer to pay hundreds of civil servants to work on the Winter Olympics next year, but both the provincial opposition and the City of Vancouver claim there are problems with the plan.

Last month, VANOC put out a call to the private sector to second up 1,500 skilled workers to help with preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics, in order to deal with its funding shortfall.

While awaiting a response, the B.C. government stepped in to help fill the gap, and issued a call on a public service website for staff to be seconded to the Games.

Minister of State for the Olympics Mary McNeil said the initial call was for more than 200 government staff to be seconded to the games, but the initial interest level was high and it's too early to say how many will actually end up working on the Games.

"It's purely voluntary, and again, we're looking at folks that have either been involved before or are interested with a specific skill set and hoping to marry them up that way," said McNeil.

The opposition suggested that the government was not acknowledging an obvious consequence of the secondment program.

"If they are not doing their regular jobs then those are services that are being cut, and again are a cost to the taxpayers of British Columbia," B.C. NDP Olympic critic Kathy Corrigan said Monday.

The public servants will remain on the government payroll, but the minister said she doesn't consider this to be an expense for the government since many likely to be involved have already spent years working on Olympic preparations, she said.

McNeil said the government is looking for people who have specialized skills in areas such as logistics or transportation.

The City of Vancouver has its own Olympic responsibilities but said it won't be offering up many employees for secondment and will not accept responsibility for the cost of extra city services during the Games.

"If there's overtime, we would expect that to be funded by some other party than the City of Vancouver," J. Paul Henderson, the city's director of Olympic operations, told CBC News Monday.

Last year, the B.C. government offered partially paid leave to its 30,000 public servants if they volunteered for the 2010 Olympics, allowing them to claim part of the time as vacation, and the other part as paid leave.