Civil service performance on downward spiral

GABORONE - Permanent Secretary to the President (PSP), Mr Eric Molale has decried laxity and complacency in the public service.
Addressing ministry officials, directors, district commissioners and council secretaries in Gaborone yesterday, Mr Molale regretted the continued down spiral of productivity in the service.
"Standards have been taking a nosedive over a period of time and this calls on you to exercise sound leadership and control." He also complained that his call in 2007 for a public service that is efficient, recognises urgency and does its work in a cost effective manner has gone unheeded. Consequently, Botswana's good policies and programmes have not been matched by equally good implementors due to laxity and complacency. Mr Molale also blamed lack of decentralisation and devolution of authority to districts. He cited instances where schools still paid suppliers after six months as authorization had to come from head offices instead of regional offices.
"There is need for improved collaboration and information flow from the central government to districts."Mr Molale expressed worry over indiscipline among some directors, district commissioners and council secretaries, which has resulted in their subordinates operating with an auto pilot mentality.
"Poor supervision causes indiscipline, resulting in poor implementation; therefore we need to change this now and enter into new agreements as you have failed to live up to the agreements we made in 2007." He observed that the attitudes and behaviours of public officers are not tuned towards improving service delivery.
He vowed to work on action plans of the officers to ensure sound leadership, warning that failure will be dealt with accordingly.
Mr Molale underscored the need for the public officers to share resources, as there could never be enough for all departments."You will see roads crews camps along the villages but you will never see the grader doing any grading work or the bowser doing any bowsing work whilst a stones away there is a council roads maintenance crew also doing roads maintenance but the two crews do not avail machinery to each other."Mr Molale also lamented tendencies by some departments to build offices and accommodation in an un-harmonised manner, saying this makes the ideals of having one stop centres impossible to achieve.
The PSP also took issue with bureaucracy, which he said impeded productivity as it stifles urgency and services to be given to the public efficiently at a lesser cost. "Process engineering should start in earnest and be cascaded down," he advised.Mr Molale also decried growing incidents of corruption that has left public perception on corrupt governance multiplying multifold. He says this results in the public buying services that are otherwise free. He noted that: "councils are corrupt through and through be it on tendering, law enforcement or on ordinary services".
The PSP also criticised wastage of government resources and funds. He stated that even during these times when the diamonds revenue has experienced a downward decline, management does nothing to reduce wastages.
He said education and health departments are the biggest culprits, giving an example of a warehouse of the education department that housed multi-million pula worth of supplies for the last five years. Similarly, drugs worth P30 million had to be destroyed as they had expired whilst district clinics had no medicines.
Mr Molale unveiled a strategic direction for 2008/9 and beyond that is result oriented giving emphasis on an urgency to change the mindsets of the directors, district commissioners and the council secretaries as they continue to manage people and resources. BOPA