Complaints about civil servants frustrating govt efforts

Complaints about civil servants frustrating govt efforts
By The Post
Fri 09 Nov. 2012, 12:30 CAT

There are complaints from the top-most leadership of this government about some civil servants trying to frustrate their work, their efforts, their programmes.

But these complaints are not new or peculiar to this government. We used to hear about them in the early 1990s from the government of Frederick Chiluba.

Chiluba and his colleagues used to complain about how civil servants aligned to UNIP were trying to frustrate their work and sabotage their programmes. Many civil servants were retired as a result of this. But the problems continued; the operations of the civil service never meaningfully improved. The Chiluba regime filled the civil service, including the police, with its own party cadres who could not perform. Most of the people they appointed did not even have the requisite qualifications and experience needed for them to efficiently and effectively perform the duties of their jobs.

After Chiluba left office and Levy Mwanawasa took over in 2001, the same complaints resurfaced. Again, some new people, who were believed to be more loyal to the new rulers, were appointed to the civil service. But the performance of the civil service did not improve.

Today, we are hearing the same arguments. Yet, this government has appointed so many people to the civil service. Almost all the permanent secretaries serving today have been appointed by them, they are people they believe are loyal to them. All the key directors in our ministries and government departments have been appointed or promoted by them to such positions. Where is the problem?
If the people they appointed are failing to perform, can this be blamed on the previous regime or on themselves?

Of course, the civil service and the public sector in general is very big and there are many people who are still serving whom they did not appoint. There are many professional civil servants who have been serving in government for many years and under different regimes. Every new regime brings in its own cadres and ignores them in promotions.

There are people in our civil service and public sector in general who have been working there for two or three decades with very high qualifications and experience, but every regime overlooks them in promotions. Political party cadres with relatively little experience and low qualifications have been placed above them by different regimes. These professional civil servants have become frustrated and don't care anymore about what happens. They have lost hope of ever being promoted and are just marking time, waiting for their retirement time to come. They can't be easily fired because they are not political appointees, they are professional civil servants who know their rights and understand very well the civil service processes and procedures.

Clearly, the challenge we face today in the running of our civil service and the public sector in general is a creation of our politicians. It is our politicians who have filled our public sector with inexperienced and unqualified people. Look at the foreign service! Take an audit of who has been sent to the foreign service over the last 21 years! A proper scrutiny will reveal that most of the people who have been sent to our foreign service over the last two decades are either relatives or close family friends of those in power or ruling party cadres. The situation has been the same under every regime since 1991. We cannot authoritatively speak on what pertained before 1991. We plead ignorance.

The foreign service has become the dumping ground of all the relatives, friends, ruling party cadres who are unemployed or are looking for an opportunity to go abroad. An audit of who is who in our foreign service will be very embarrassing to all regimes that have been in charge of our country over the last 21 years, including the current one. There is no regime over the last 21 years that can reasonably and confidently talk about a professional foreign service.

And this practice has even created over-employment in our civil service. We have too many people in our foreign service doing nothing, but earning a salary from the taxpayer. Even countries richer than us do not have such a highly bloated foreign service. We have all sorts of officers in our missions who are doing nothing; whose job is only to meet senior government officials when they happen to pass through or visit those countries. This is not the best way to run government and to use our very limited public resources.
Even here at home, a good number of our civil servants are people who are not fit to occupy the offices they have been appointed to, hence the inefficiency that our politicians are correctly complaining about.

In the past, we mean before 1991, it used to be very difficult to join the civil service because one had to go through a number of examinations before one was employed as a civil servant. Now all one needs is simply the right political or other connections. This may be good for those who are in influential positions because they are able to help their relatives and friends, but it is not good for the performance of the government in general and indeed for their own personal performance. The consequence of this is that top government leaders are not getting the required or right service from civil servants for them to be able to deliver on their promises to the people. And there is nothing which makes people more appreciative of a government than that it should be able to deliver services.

In saying this, we are not in any way saying that those who have relatives in top government or political positions should never be employed in the civil service or the public sector in general. They are Zambians and they should be allowed to occupy any public office for which they have the requisite experience and qualifications. But let that be the basis for their engagement, and not any other considerations that may negatively impact on the performance of government and of the political leadership in government.

Until the political leadership running government addresses these issues, they have no legitimate right to complain about the poor performance of the civil service and the public sector in general because the problem has been created by themselves and it is within their capacity to correct.