Being served satisfactorily at Government offices is rare and often, the officials are not in. A jacket or cardigan is all there may be to show that the official reported to the office, but took a walk on personal errands or other business.
Bureaucracy is a major hurdle and the services take long for those who seek national identity cards, birth or death certificates, land title deeds, passports and to register companies or societies, among other things.
The State has often received flak over poor pay and conditions of work. But the disclosure on Tuesday that some civil servants have stagnated in the same grade for 20 years is the heart of the matter and root of the failures of the Civil Service.
And this revelation was from a senior Government official, the director in charge of management and consultancy services at the Ministry of Public Service, Mr Andrew Metho. And he had more shocking news.
Some civil servants, especially in the districts, do not receive Government circulars from the Directorate of Personnel Management (DPM) on promotion and vacancies. As a result, they do not know about the scheme of service they serve under.
Are the circulars sent and where do they go if civil servants do not receive them? Circulars go through the Civil Service chain and if they do not reach those they are intended, then someone sits on them, essentially blocking crucial information from employees.
Such people — whether heads of department or sections — must be identified and made answerable for this heinous act. Their actions are responsible for the low morale that has afflicted many civil servants.
Employees who have marked time in the same grade for 20 years are not far away from retirement. For the past two decades, they have worked hard, but seen colleagues bypass them and rise the Civil Service ladder although they may have equal or even better qualifications.
It has been thought that training civil servants would help resolve the lethargy that characterises the Civil Service. But Metho now says that the training programmes do not always benefit staff.
And how can they? If pay and work conditions are poor, the job manual in this era of cutting edge technology and promotions are never forthcoming, the end result cannot be anything else other than what the Civil Service is.
In the past three years, the Government has improved salaries and allowances. But there has been that constant claim that this has favoured the cadre in the high echelons of the Civil Service such as permanent secretaries, deputy secretaries and parastatal chiefs. This must be addressed.
There should be a clear procedure for promotion. It is ridiculous to argue that because employees never apply for it, they cannot be promoted.
Though there is an e-government programme, it has not gone down far enough and most offices are synonymous with heaps and heaps of files. The Government must computerise, not just to make employees’ work easier and more efficient, but also improve services to wananchi.
It is encouraging that the Civil Service is ready to learn from the private sector. Metho’s disclosure that a team from the DPM would visit Kenya Airways, East African Breweries and the UN to learn more about staff development will be sweet to the ears of civil servants.
Quelle/Source: The Standard, 30.11.2006
