Public Service Day
Public Service DayBy Editor
Tuesday June 24, 2008 [04:00]
IN 2001, ministers responsible for civil service met in Namibia for the third Biennial Pan African conference and adopted an African public service charter, whose aim was to set standards that would restore prestige and dignity to the public service, and raise performance levels and competence in governments.
And yesterday, there was a celebration of Africa Public Service Day to honour all the men and women whose responsibility it is to serve our people. It is an important day on our calendar, although it is not a public holiday, and one we observe in Zambia.
The purpose of Africa Public Service Day is to bring public servants together to commemorate the value and virtue of service delivery improvement to the communities they serve; consider the working conditions of men and women who devote their lives to serve the public; encourage positive interest by citizens in the work of public administration; reward good initiatives; and promote professionalism.
We are aware that the public service is an area of great importance for promoting justice and development in the nation; a way of building up society for the common good.
And to make progress as a nation, we therefore need a public service that has intelligent, honest and humble workers who see their jobs as a vocation to serve the people. This is much more so in a poor country like ours where there are still many people who each day cannot meet the basic needs necessary for a descent human life.
It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental needs to remain unsatisfied.
There is nothing which makes people more appreciative of a government than that it should be able to deliver services. Moreover, a government is the instrument by which people co-operate in order to achieve the common good. An authority is needed to guide the energies of all towards the common good.
To achieve these objectives, the public service needs men and women of high credibility operating on strict principles and rules of conduct.
Public servants need to treat all citizens equally. And they need to deliver government services with neutrality, of course along the objectives of the government of the day.
This means that corruption, in any way or form, should not be tolerated. There should be strict adherence to legality in terms of administrative decisions conforming to laws and regulations.
The services of a government must be placed near people and made accessible to all those who are entitled to them.
And the relationship between the public service administration and its employees should be based on professional merit and respect for human rights, and not on patronage, nepotism or ruling party cadreship.
The public service should also see to the career development prospects of public service employees while ensuring the development of human resources and their self-fulfilment. These must be respected in recruitment and promotion, mobility and redeployment, staff training and development, motivation of staff, remuneration and physical safety, working conditions and security of tenure.
We need to re-look the security of tenure of our permanent secretaries and other senior public servants who are currently serving on contracts given to them by the political appointing authorities. It is difficult to understand how we can expect such permanent secretaries to be effective and efficient controlling officers when their contracts can easily be terminated by the same people they are supposed to control - the politicians.
Being in a multiparty political dispensation requires us to have a public service that is more or less independent of the politicians in government and whose tenure should not be affected by who gets in or leaves government.
Most of the permanent secretaries today are appointed on what one can say are partisan lines. Cadres of the ruling party dominate the ranks of permanent secretaries. Why should it be so difficult to promote career public service employees to the position of permanent secretary? Most career public service workers stagnate at the position of director while ruling party cadres and other well-connected elements with no public service backgrounds are appointed over their heads to become permanent secretaries.
This inevitably leads to corruption in the public service. And where there is corruption, efficiency and effectiveness suffers.
It will be much better to have a more professional public service than what we currently have. It will be better to remove our politicians from the duties of appointing civil servants. And not even a district commissioner should be appointed by a politician. And it's no wonder some of our permanent secretaries and district commissioners have difficulties accepting the fact that they are not part of the political class of government and behave and speak like they are politicians.
We agree with Secretary to the Cabinet, Dr Joshua Kanganja, when he says that a balance has to be struck between salaries of public service employees and the provision of services to the public they are employed to serve.
Right now, more of government revenue is consumed by the bureaucracy and not service provision. And when we talk about this, we should also add the political bureaucracy, that is, Cabinet ministers, deputy ministers and all sorts of aides. There is need to rationalise the size of this bureaucracy and the resources it gobbles. We cannot afford to continue this negative imbalance while our hospitals are under-resourced. This is not the most sensible way, the most prudent way, the most rational way of spending taxpayers’ money.
Rationalising public service expenditure is the best way of honouring all the many women and men whose responsibility is to serve our people. This is the only way we can help restore prestige and dignity to our public service, and raise the performance and competence levels in government. This is the only way we can foster a neutral and stable environment conducive to the strengthening of ethical values and the image of the public service, as well as the professionalism of its employees; and the fundamental values of a public service rooted in professionalism and ethics.
Labels: CIVIL SERVANTS, GOVERNANCE
posted by MrK @ 3:45 AM
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