Maravi

Abuse of the civil service

Abuse of the civil service
By The Post
Sun 05 Sep. 2010, 04:00 CAT

SWEARING-in Anthony Undi as permanent secretary for the Ministry of Finance, Rupiah Banda on Friday instructed him to implement government projects in time for the 2011 elections. Rupiah told Undi that they don’t have much time because next year will be election time.

Surely, all government projects need to be implemented in the shortest possible time without compromising quality, efficiency, effectiveness and orderliness. People need these projects and the services they provide. There’s nothing which makes people more appreciative of a government than that it should be able to deliver services.

But why should the government’s provision of services or completion of projects be tied to elections? Our five-year national development plans are not in any way tied to elections or synchronised with our electoral calendar.

And equally our annual national budgets are not in any way tied to the national electoral programme. This being the case, why should the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Finance be told to ensure that projects are completed before next year’s election?

We have seen the government, at all levels, undertake projects at supersonic speeds in areas where there are by-elections. In August, roads were being graded in Ndola’s Chifubu Constituency in time for the parliamentary by-election.

And works on the gravel feeder road that is being constructed in the Luena Constituency were also accelerated in time for the parliamentary by-election in that area.

Soon we will start to see some government projects being implemented at unusual speed in Mpulungu in time for the parliamentary by-election that is due within the next 90 days in that constituency. But is this the best way to allocate public resources and implement government projects?

This irrational approach to the allocation of public resources and implementation of government projects will not lead to any meaningful development. In most cases, this senseless rush in implementing government projects to meet election deadlines has resulted in the stealing and abuse of public funds.

And usually the projects have been implemented in a very shoddy way. That which is meant to be used as a campaign tool by those in power is usually abandoned or not completed after the elections.
Public projects should not be undertaken purely for the purposes of winning elections by those in power. This is a recipe for corruption and misallocation, misapplication, misuse and misappropriation of public funds. We have so many examples of projects that have been abandoned or stalled after elections.

No one is grading roads in Chifubu today. That project stopped immediately after the by-election which the ruling MMD lost. And we wonder if the same momentum has been maintained in the construction of the feeder road in Luena.
And it is this misuse, or rather abuse, of civil servants by the politicians in power that has led to high levels of corruption.

Those in power have appointed top civil servants who are their relatives, sons or daughters of their friends, tribesmen or those coming from the same towns or villages with them to ensure that they help them when times for elections come.

As controlling officers, some civil servants have managed public funds and projects in a manner that aids the election campaigns of those in power. We saw what happened with Kashiwa Bulaya as permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health.

Bulaya turned the Ministry of Health accounts into a campaign fund for Frederick Chiluba. And they have been using this ministry in all sorts of ways to this day to aid their political campaigns.

To do this, the permanent secretary and other top civil servants in the ministry have to cooperate. So nepotism becomes the basis for appointments and promotion. It is these civil servants that are transferring public funds to politicians and their political projects.

And the corruption cases that have so far been prosecuted in our courts of law have clearly demonstrated this matrix of plunder and corruption. Almost all the top civil servants in the Ministry of Finance under Chiluba were found to be corrupt and were stealing public funds with him. This is the type of public service we have in our country today.

We have permanent secretaries who are directly appointed by the President and are serving on very short-term contracts that can be terminated by him at any time. Can such permanent secretaries really be said to be independent professionals in the service of the people?

Even some of the problems that we today face with the conduct of our elections arise from this lack of independence by our civil servants from the politicians who appoint them. The key officers of our electoral commission are appointed by the President and can be disappointed by him without giving any reason.

And we shouldn’t forget that a greater part of our electoral process is managed by officers from the Ministry of Local Government who are appointed by the same politicians in power. Some of these officers are strategically placed in that ministry for the purposes of elections. How can such officers be expected to conduct elections in an impartial manner?

Clearly, there’s urgent need for civil service reform so that our civil servants can enjoy merit selection, insulation from undue political influence, and - to the extent possible - arrangements can be made to promote the productivity of civil servants.

Our civil service, at the moment, is over-politicised. We have not forgotten the case of that permanent secretary in the Ministry of Tourism who went to Solwezi to try and seek adoption by the ruling party to contest the parliamentary by-election on its ticket. He didn’t resign his job as permanent secretary before contesting the MMD primary election process.

After he lost, he was transferred to another ministry - the Ministry of Energy - in the same capacity. Clearly, this permanent secretary is not an independent senior civil servant. He is an MMD cadre. This is the type of civil service we have in this country today where civil servants are cadres of the ruling party.

And as such, they are doing everything possible to ensure that their party remains in government. They are accordingly diverting public funds to projects and other schemes that bolster their party’s electoral chances.

As a result of all this, we today have senior civil servants who lack professional depth and often fail to provide any chain of continuity in government over the long term. As a result of all this, delivery of public services tends to be inefficient and, often, beset by corruption.

We need a professional civil service which is recruited on merit and protected from arbitrary removal, and one that enjoys protection of its political neutrality through the policing of this service by an independent body.

It is only through radical reforms of the civil service that we are going to get more efficient and honest public servants and do away with public-employment patronage that finances competition between political parties and factions from being a dominant feature.

There’s need for us to improve governance in order to enable our people to build real freedom and real development for themselves. There’s need to improve the management of our affairs through understanding more about our past political and economic mistakes.

Government institutions need to be managed in the most efficient, effective and orderly manner because in the final analysis it’s the government that bears the responsibility for the state of the nation and the well-being of its people.

Labels: CIVIL SERVANTS, CORRUPTION

posted by MrK @ 4:50 AM