Contracts can bring sanity to civil service

Mar 21, 2011

PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has announced a set of tough anti-corruption measures including making senior civil servants serve on six-month contracts only renewable on good performance.

PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has announced a set of tough anti-corruption measures including making senior civil servants serve on six-month contracts only renewable on good performance.

The President’s frustration with the civil service, as reflected in his remarks over the past two weeks, is shared by many who have sought services from public officers.

Uganda inherited a civil service bureaucracy modeled on the British colonial system. However, while the civil service in the developed world has undergone transformation and is more efficient, our civil service seems to be mired in the old bureaucracy and has not moved with the times. Some of our public officers still work time and not tasks.

Although the Government has attempted to reform the public service since the 1990s, the reforms have largely not delivered due to failure to modify the recruitment process. The public service has maintained a rigid recruitment system that makes it difficult for people from the private sector to be hired at senior level.

They usually prefer to promote someone who has grown through the service, thereby ensuring continuity of the same bureaucracy. Thus, if a boss has been taking three months before making a decision or taking trips without delegating authority, the successor from within will simply maintain the status quo as it would appear strange to act differently.

That is why it is important to reform public service recruitment to enable the hiring of those who can look at issues differently at senior level.

The six-month contract for senior civil servants is a step in the right direction.However, there is need to carefully study the problems affecting effectiveness of the public service and the needed reforms.

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