Yes, civil service reform overdue
Mar 14, 2011
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni’s call for reforms to make the civil service understand the concept of profitability for economic transformation is long overdue.
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni’s call for reforms to make the civil service understand the concept of profitability for economic transformation is long overdue.
While there are a few hardworking and honest individuals within the civil service, there exists a powerful and corrupt lot that hide under the bureaucratic system to frustrate progammes where they do not see personal gain. If the President can be frustrated, how about the ordinary citizen?
The President has said and rightly so that the civil service can no longer be run on a laissez faire kind of arrangement, but as a profit-making enterprise. If it is a profit making enterprise, there is no room for wasteful expenditure and time is an invaluable resource.
It is only in the Ugandan public service where an officer can delay a decision for weeks or months without a valid reason. It is also only in our public service that an officer can go on a trip for weeks without delegating his responsibilities, halting all operations that require the services of that office.
The transformation of the civil service should start by changing the mindset that times have changed and the bureaucratic management models of the 1980s can no longer deliver.
It should be a performance target for all civil servants to have succession plans such that the absence of an individual officer does not cripple services. There is no reason why some civil servants work for decades without taking annual leave if it is not because of poor succession planning or sheer corruption.
Reducing the time within which clients are served drastically curtails corruption. The National Water and Sewerage Corporation and transcript processing at Makerere University are good examples where strict observance of timelines has wiped out corruption.
The Clients Charter proposed by the President’s Office recently is a good starting point if enforced.
While there are a few hardworking and honest individuals within the civil service, there exists a powerful and corrupt lot that hide under the bureaucratic system to frustrate progammes where they do not see personal gain. If the President can be frustrated, how about the ordinary citizen?
The President has said and rightly so that the civil service can no longer be run on a laissez faire kind of arrangement, but as a profit-making enterprise. If it is a profit making enterprise, there is no room for wasteful expenditure and time is an invaluable resource.
It is only in the Ugandan public service where an officer can delay a decision for weeks or months without a valid reason. It is also only in our public service that an officer can go on a trip for weeks without delegating his responsibilities, halting all operations that require the services of that office.
The transformation of the civil service should start by changing the mindset that times have changed and the bureaucratic management models of the 1980s can no longer deliver.
It should be a performance target for all civil servants to have succession plans such that the absence of an individual officer does not cripple services. There is no reason why some civil servants work for decades without taking annual leave if it is not because of poor succession planning or sheer corruption.
Reducing the time within which clients are served drastically curtails corruption. The National Water and Sewerage Corporation and transcript processing at Makerere University are good examples where strict observance of timelines has wiped out corruption.
The Clients Charter proposed by the President’s Office recently is a good starting point if enforced.