Maravi

Chipimo urges professionalism in politics, civil service

Chipimo urges professionalism in politics, civil service
By Moses Kuwema
Thu 08 Mar. 2012, 11:59 CAT

NATIONAL Restoration Party president Elias Chipimo Jr says politics has come out more strongly than the professionalism required for running a proper civil service.

Commenting on information minister Fackson Shamenda's statement that what was happening to those who served in the MMD government could equally happen to the PF leaders, Chipimo said because of the failure of professionalism in the civil service, the PF leaders, if not careful, could fall in the same situation.

Shamenda's comments come in the wake of former information minister Lieutenant General Ronnie Shikapwasha's denial to pay a surcharge over legal fees accrued by ZNBC through Chanda Chimba's highly defamatory programme Stand Up Zambia.
Lt Gen Shikapwasha and his former permanent secretary Dr Sam Phiri had been ordered by the government, through Secretary to the Treasury Fredson Yamba, to pay K900 million towards legal fees for Chimba's programmes that were aired prior to the September 20, 2011 general elections.

"What goes around comes around, so the precedence has been set in pursuing the minister for acts that would have been conducted by him Shikapwasha while in office," Chipimo said.

He observed that ministers were not trained civil servants and that this made it difficult for some of them to adhere to the administration of governance and implement government policies.

"They are political appointees who are supposed to advise the government on policy. Now the precedence that has been there from Frederick Chiluba's time...because he was not in a position to trust the civil service, because it has been loyal to one government for 27 years. So when they came in, they started to introduce permanent secretaries not on the basis of them having risen through the ranks but on the basis of loyalty. The permanent secretary is a chief executive officer for the ministry and if you have a good PS who follows the rules so that they implement policies and the ministers simply come up to advise the president, then you won't have this kind of problem arising. The problem we have had is we don't have career civil servants that are manning the departments as a general, particularly the office of the permanent secretary," he said.

Chipimo said it was because of this scenario that ministers could do certain things without being controlled by permanent secretaries who he said, in most instances, were not career civil servants.

He said it was unfortunate that the political agenda had given the ministers more power than they ought to have.

"The regulations are actually there. The problem is enforcement and an understanding of how they are supposed to operate. If the civil servant within that ministry knows the work, he can prevent the minister from doing something which would land him and the government into trouble and this is where we have a failure because unfortunately politics has come out more strongly than the professionalism required for running a proper civil service," said Chipimo.

Labels: CIVIL SERVANTS, ELIAS CHIPIMO, FACKSON SHAMENDA, PERMANENT SECRETARIES

posted by MrK @ 6:19 PM