| Sports |
 by Dr MICHAEL
UNAGE
Public service
failing people
Commuting with other passengers from Goroka
to Kundiawa, I listened to a conversation between two youngsters.
In their intense attention-grabbing conversation, the phrase
“politicians and civil servants are parasites of taxpayers” captivated
my thoughts.
During the rest of the journey, I tried to work out what the phase
actually meant for these youngsters, seemingly less educated yet able to
decipher the nub of issues.
Is it true that our politicians and civil servants are parasites of
taxpayers?
Is it a common perception among our people that civil servants are
prodigiously feting and squandering public funds?
Common people want to see tangible benefits from their tax
contributions.
However, when people in management and implementing agencies of the
state fail to deliver, people have the right to question what is exactly
happening.
These young men have a point to make. Milking of state assets by people
in position of governance and management of state institutions is true
when people do not receive social welfare benefits and government
service delivery.
Most often, despondency by citizen are blamed on politicians. However,
being partly culpable, the greatest parasites are the public servants,
which can adequately be described as the “idle monster of the state”.
In a series of article in this column, we shall try to diagnosis the
predicament of the public sector.
To begin, we will start with a true story. A medical officer in a health
centre in Simbu, after high on alcohol, went to a market place and made
a mess of himself.
In an instance, he was confronted by a group of people who got
frustrated because he was never at work.
During the confrontation, the people told him that he was not a public
servant but a public nuisance.
Whether being labelled a public parasite or a public nuisance, our civil
service needs to redeem its negative image and become a viable service
delivery arm of government.
A feasible and functioning public service is the most talked about topic
of any government of the day.
Nonetheless, the implementation remains a stumbling block.
Ironically, the Government has plans to reform the public sector in
catchword such as “right sizing” or “downsizing” which indeed have shown
to be futile exercises and a waste of public money.
At the end, the exercise doesn’t impact any changes. The very exercise
at reform itself has become a failure, rendering the public service
machinery sedative.
Indeed, the general attitude and behaviour of the public servants,
according to our diagnosis, is termed as public debauchery, a word that
has many connotation, nonetheless, according to one dictionary,
debauchery is defined as “a relapse in duty and virtue”.
The malfunctioning and lack of productivity by the public sector is due
to the relapse in these two areas, ie, duty and virtue.
A relapse in duty and virtue would render any performance inefficient
and ineffective.
Now, clarity is required to define performance of civil servants’
inefficiency and ineffectiveness.
In our day-to-day use, the words efficiency and effectiveness would mean
doing a job properly. However, there is a marked difference that we need
to become acquainted with in dealing with these terms.
Efficiency deals with inputs and outputs of an undertaking.
It is how best and how well an activity is assessed according to the
amount of money invested, the resources required, and the personnel
involved in an engagement.
It solely assesses the activity and how well that activity is carried
out.
Thus, it measures all the efforts put into accomplishing a task.
Effectiveness, on the other hand, thought logically following from
efficiency, assesses outcomes, the result of any intended activity.
It does not necessarily assess and measure the activity, but the
intended result of any activity.
However, in some situations, efficiency in any activity does not
necessarily result in effectiveness.
For the sake of the average reader, some analogy is necessary.
A village farmer used his available resource, time and energy in
cultivating a plot to plant melons.
After employing what was required for the activity, he has a nice melon
garden. After toiling and tendering the garden, the melon, however,
failed to bear fruit.
It only flowers and withers away without giving the gardener the fruits
of his labour – a wasted effort.
We can say the gardener is efficient because he puts in all that is
required of the activity, but not effective because he doesn’t produce
the results.
Indeed, the analogy, in some manner is similar to the performance of the
public servant.
However, this is another aspect regarding the inefficiency of the public
sector that needs mentioning.
There seem to be a great deal of input by the government into the public
sector, however the output which is actually assessing the efforts
remains a problem for the public sector as well.
This means to say that there is not much effort put into their assigned
tasks rendering their activity inefficient.
Hence, in measuring efficiency, the amount, resources, and personnel
required for inputs must transpire in a corresponding output.
For instance, if the Government spends K50 million in salaries of public
servants every fortnight, there must be an effort equivalent to K50
million output by the public servants every two weeks.
And what are the output activities of other input pumped into the public
sector such as the administrative and derivative grants?
If the people are not getting what they are supposed to receive by the
input invested by the Government for policy implementation and service
delivery, we all should seriously question the efficiency and
effectiveness of the public sector.
In the coming weeks, we shall try to discuss in this column what makes
the public service both inefficient and ineffective.
We have identified four areas that have contributed to “public
debauchery”.
The four general categories for our diagnosis are – 1. perfunctory, 2.
lack of professionalism, 3. misappropriation and 4. illicit personal
conduct.
Next week we shall discuss the symptoms and effects of perfunctory in
the public sector.
 
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