Maravi

‘We have destroyed our civil service’

‘We have destroyed our civil service’
By Editor
Sun 17 Jan. 2010, 04:01 CAT

Whenever Colonel Panji Kaunda opens his mouth, some very important message is always delivered. Col Panji speaks a lot of sense on important national issues and does so with outstanding courage and honesty.

Today, with his usual honesty and frankness, he is observing that our country’s civil service has been destroyed:

“My worry as a citizen is I feel we have destroyed our civil service, the government is not the minister or deputy minister or the politicians, the government is the civil service. The civil service is supposed to serve any government that comes into power, the civil service is a trained board of cadres who know how the government runs. I am talking more so at the levels of permanent secretary, at the levels of the district commissioners. I think these should be separated from the political parties – PF, UPND, MMD or others. These people are not really serving the MMD, they are serving all the people in Zambia. How is the civil service supposed to run? It is career, it’s not the job for the cadres. That’s how the civil service was.”

No one can disagree with Col Panji that our civil service has been destroyed. Ministers and other politicians today have taken over the responsibilities of civil servants. It’s not unusual to see the decisions that are supposed to be made by the permanent secretary being made by the minister.

Appointments to the civil service are also political. There are no qualifications for one to be appointed a permanent secretary. Any ruling party cadre or friend or relative to the president can today be appointed a permanent secretary. Look at the calibre of some of our permanent secretaries! They leave much to be desired. The ministries they run, or are supposed to run, are very big and complex institutions requiring a lot of experience and intellectual capacity. Most of our permanent secretaries have none of these. The only qualification they have is political connection.

And this is why when there are by-elections, we see some permanent secretaries attempting to be adopted by the ruling party and after they fail, they come back and continue as civil servants as if nothing happened. Can one really expect a permanent secretary of that type to be a serious controlling officer? The answer is a categorical no. And political appointments have gone far below directors – almost every civil servant holding some small position today has to play patronage to those in power. This is not a recipe for the establishment of an efficient, effective and orderly civil service. And for these reasons, we agree with everything Col Panji is saying on this score because politicisation of the civil service is known to have a number of adverse consequences. First of all, it hampers the building of high administrative capacity. Given the frequent changes that may occur in government, civil servants, who only last as long as the current president, simply do not stay in their jobs long enough to accumulate experience.

Civil service positions should be kept out of the direct influence of politicians. Whereas governments may change frequently, career civil servants should remain, accumulate experience and skills, and guarantee continuity of the state. To establish such effective and responsible civil service should be something we pay a lot of attention to and prioritise. We have to change our civil service from one dominated by a purely reactive behaviour and an attitude of total subordination to political direction to a proactive, creative and politically independent one. There is need to shield our civil service from direct political interference and establish a culture of civil service professionalism that can help us achieve administrative stability.

And the civil service, of course, must be considered within the larger context of public administration. Good public administration is one of the basic requirements for economic development. In our development efforts, our first task is not to get capital or technicians but, where these are lacking, to build competent organs of public administration.

If good public administration is essential to the process of economic development, no aspect of this field is as fundamental as the competence of the civil service. For without competent, informed and dedicated personnel, no government can hope to embark successfully on a programme of large scale development and improvement. Indeed, the history of many countries would indicate that successful economic growth is generally conditioned by preceding or simultaneous development of an improved civil service system.

Even the initiation of an economic development programme, though its inception may be the work of political leaders assisted by various experts, is largely dependent on the assistance of a competent civil service. The civil service is intimately associated with practically every phase of economic development. An intelligent civil service will inevitably have a considerable share in policy determination as well. Thus it can be easily understood that although the civil service is only one of the resources which must be employed to achieve economic development, it is a most vital element of the process.

Therefore, it is obvious that the success of a national development programme depends very much on the effectiveness of the civil service. And the effectiveness of the civil service depends, in turn, on good administration of public personnel.
It is our opinion that the solutions to the problems of our civil service are fundamental to the development of our country.

One of the great problems faced by our civil service is the identification of trained personnel and their utilisation in those areas in which their abilities will have maximum impact. We must make the best use of the people we have. The human resources of a country, in terms of education, training, skills, numbers, mobility, income and expenditures will be a major determinant of economic development and self-sustaining growth. It is of the utmost importance to determine our manpower needs, facilitate the training of personnel to meet those needs and assure their continuing employment at their highest skill. The problem of mobilising the manpower resources of a nation is, to be sure, not solely a civil service problem. It involves action along a much broader front. Nevertheless, in countries like ours where the government is far and away the largest employer, the civil service must assume a major role in the task.

Another problem that is as great as, or even greater than the others is the problem of change. All of us are aware of the difficulties which face any attempt to introduce in a legal form the concept of a civil service based on the merit system. It’s easier for our politicians to talk about merit but when it comes to appointing their cadres, their supporters and campaign managers, merit is thrown out through the window. Of course, we all know that the passage of a law does not automatically mean that the law will be effective. To make a law effective requires a great deal of work; the law must be implemented by an active organisation, by personnel, by policies, methods and procedures; by office space, by desks, by paper clips; in short, a living administrative organism must be created.

And, even if the different step of putting the civil service law successfully into effective is accomplished, a still greater problem has to be solved – the problem of how to change human behaviour to conform to the changing environment and conditions. This is probably the hardest thing of all to accomplish. Look at what happened with appointments to the diplomatic service! At one time there was so much talk about appointing professional or career diplomats. People went to NIPA to train for such jobs. But how many of such people are today in foreign service? Our foreign service is still dominated by cadres, friends and relatives of those in power. The whole system functions on or is propelled by nepotism. Resistance to change is a human characteristic and the higher in society we go, the more resistance we can expect. There is an old Lozi saying that an old tree is difficult to bend. Those at the top will naturally resist change which might threaten their authority and prerogatives.

The same observations can be made in the field of civil service in our country. Unfortunately, for our country, the ideal of an incorruptible public service remains a distant goal. It is likely to remain so as long as civil servants are inadequately paid for the duties and responsibilities they perform. However, we are of the opinion that integrity, like morale, is not solely dependent on salary. The most highly paid public servants are not necessarily the most honest public servants. We believe we have made insufficient use of other alternative solutions to the problems of our civil service; it is too easy to blame all the problems of our civil service on low pay. Corruption in our public service must be fought in all its forms. A civil service respected for its integrity and efficiency is not only a keystone of economic development, it will also more readily elicit public co-operation at home and abroad.

There is need to change or improve the way we select, appoint or promote people to civil service jobs. We need to start selecting the best qualified for appointment and promotion.

We have no alternative but to work very hard and correct the problems of our civil service. Of course, mistakes will be made but that shouldn’t stop us from working. In Bemba, we have a saying that the more you work, the more mistakes you make; the less you work, the fewer mistakes you make; if you don’t work at all, you make no mistakes. So why work?

A sober appraisal of our civil service problems will certainly lead us to the conclusion that a lot needs to be done because the whole system, as Col Panji has correctly observed, has been destroyed. There will be problems in trying to correct the situation especially with the very high levels of corruption and nepotism that today characterise our civil service. All obstacles must be eventually overcome by persistence and sincerity. Our great enemy is time. Time is catching up with us. What was good enough 45 years ago, or even 10 years ago, is not good enough today. The complexity of our lives increases at an accelerated tempo. We must measure up to our responsibilities if our country is to share fully in the benefits of modern technology and economic development. We cannot guarantee that a good civil service will bring success in economic development, but there is ample evidence to indicate that successful economic development cannot be attained without a good civil service.

Labels: CIVIL SERVANTS, PANJI KAUNDA

posted by MrK @ 7:05 PM