Maravi

Appointments to parastatal boards

Appointments to parastatal boards
By The Post
Sun 22 Jan. 2012, 14:00 CAT

WE need to pay special attention to the management of our parastatal organisations. If managed well, our parastatal companies can greatly contribute to the economic development of our country. There are countries where state enterprises are playing a key role in economic development.

Look at Singapore, a very small country with about 4.3 million people running the biggest airline in the world as a parastatal. Singapore Airlines is a parastatal. And today, that airline also owns Quantas, the Australian national carrier. One of the biggest telecommunication companies in the world is also a parastatal from Singapore.

And many countries today have parastatals that are run by their intelligence services to advance special national economic interests. But they are run well and in an efficient, effective, orderly and accountable manner. We still have a few parastatal organisations in this country and we have a duty to run them well.

Parastatal organisations should be characterised by their capacity to serve the common good of society through the production of useful goods and services. The sense of responsibility in economic initiative should demonstrate the individual and social virtues necessary for the development. A parastatal enterprise must be a community of solidarity and not a vehicle for promoting cronyism and corruption.

Therefore, those who are appointed to manage these enterprises should be the best among those who are available. Sad things have been happening in appointments to parastatal boards and management. Relatives and friends of those in power, regardless of their suitability, have been put as directors and top managers of parastatal organisations, at the expense of well-qualified and competent Zambians.

The motive of appointments to the boards and management of parastatal organisations should not be to give jobs to relatives and friends or ruling party cadres but to contribute to the common good of society.

The roles of directors and managers of parastatal organisations have a central importance from the viewpoint of society, because they are at the heart of that network of technical, commercial, financial and cultural bonds that characterises the modern business reality.

For this reason, the exercise of responsibility by those in power and the people they appoint to our parastatal boards and management requires constant reflection on the moral motivations that should guide the personal choices of those to whom these tasks fall.

Every effort should be made to make every parastatal enterprise become a community of persons. We must be responsible in the way we run our parastatal organisations. These organisations are today in trouble not because of their ownership but because of the way people are appointed to run them and how those who have been appointed actually run them.

The temptation is very high for those in power to appoint their friends and relatives to parastatal boards and top management positions. But this is a sure way for them to fail because those relatives and friends of theirs will fail to deliver. Political debts of those in power should not be paid through appointments to parastatal organisations.

We know that there are so many people who extended some favours, in one way or another, to those today in power to help them win last year's elections. But the best way to pay that political debt is not through appointing them to parastatal jobs that they are not able to perform efficiently and effectively. The best way to pay that debt is to run public affairs in the most efficient, effective and orderly manner so that the country moves forward.

When this happens, all, including those who had extended some political favours to those in power, will benefit. Let the best among us manage the affairs of our parastatal organisations on our behalf. Much more needs to be said and to be done if we are to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our public sector to meet effectively the massive problems of human suffering in our country today.

There is also need for accountability in appointments to our parastatal organisations. Those given the responsibility to do so need to account for every appointment they make.

These appointments should be subjected to public scrutiny. Public life is not an opportunity for self-enrichment, it is an opportunity to serve others. Everyone should have the right to equal access to public jobs, regardless of who is in power. What should only matter is their competency.

Those responsible for appointing the directors and top management of our parastatal organisations should not lose sight of the fact that the common good is the reason for the existence of these parastatal organisations. And the best way to fulfill their obligations is by ensuring that every appointment they make helps to contribute to the common good.

The political power they today hold must have as its aim the achievement of the common good. And their powers to appoint directors and top management of our parastatal organisations can only be said to have been exercised legitimately if they are committed to the common good of society. Let them devote themselves to the welfare of all and not to the interests of their friends and relatives.

And there should be a limit to how many boards one can serve as a director. We have some people, especially those in government, serving on many boards of parastatal organisations. There should be a limit to how many boards a person can belong. In the end, their contribution amounts to nothing. They are just there to collect a sitting allowance.

And moreover, why should someone who is using government time to attend a board meeting of a government owned entity be paid a sitting allowance? If these sitting allowances are removed, there will be better representations from government on some of these boards because only those willing to do a good job would offer themselves.

And also one important thing to bear in mind is that those who are appointed by our politicians as directors in parastatal boards are not representatives of the appointing authority.

They are representatives of the organisations on whose boards they serve. And their duty should be to represent the interests of the organisation and not of the political authority that appointed them.

Labels: PARASTATALS, REUBEN LIFUKA, TIZ

posted by MrK @ 1:40 PM