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 by Dr MICHAEL
UNAGE
Apathy in the
public service
LAST week we dealt with inefficiency and
ineffectiveness of the public sector generally as an introduction and
identified four categories of debauchery.
The four were perfunctory, lack of professionalism, misappropriation,
and illicit personal conduct.
For some readers, the word perfunctory needs to be defined.
In one sense, perfunctory means a mechanical and involuntary manner of
performing a duty.
It generally implies apathy towards performing one’s duty, and becomes
the major contributing factor towards inefficiency.
The attitude of perfunctory has gained momentum since independence, when
self-rule not only connotes liberation from authoritarianism (nogat
boss) but also from responsibility (nogat wokboi).
It afflicts public servants who have developed an indifferent attitude
towards their duties, because they cannot be accountable to the state
(employer) as well as to themselves (employees).
In our assessment of outputs, the one area to measure is the effort
invested in an activity.
Public servants with mediocre attitude towards work will put less effort
into their work.
This means that the Government is employing people who are unwilling to
be of service to others.
If so, we can undoubtedly conclude that public servants are
irresponsible stewards of the state, and the Government would have to
develop a comprehensive psychological and moral strategy to overcome
this.
Before dealing with the causes of apathy in the public sector, let us
first deal with the symptoms of perfunctory.
We will only discuss three in this article.
l Lack of punctuality for duties is the first symptom of perfunctory:
Not only do we often not find them in office at 8am but many turn up as
late as 10am.
While they are late in turning up, they are often quick to leave the
office.
In between, they can disappear for hours. Sometimes, they fail to return
to office after lunch.
Absenteeism is also a serious problem, especially in the districts and
outlying areas.
In some provinces, public servants assigned to the district operate from
the provincial headquarters.
l Indolence:
Many public servants take their time to accomplish even the daily
activities.
This is partly due to the fact that many perform the same tasks every
day which make their job mechanical and monotonous, leading to boredom.
If there is a mediocre bunch of people in a workplace characterised by
boredom and indolence, it would definitely include public servants.
There boredom and indolence are not necessarily due to heavy workload
but psychological.
It is simply an expression of indifference or rather a negative attitude
developed towards work.
l Negligence: This is the third symptom of perfunctory, resulting from
indolence.
Negligence is a deliberate act of avoiding, procrastinating, or escaping
from the basic requirement of daily duties.
Although it may be caused by a lapse of memory, it is often more the
result of a careless and irresponsible attitude developed towards duty
and service.
There are other expressions of perfunctory in the workforce but these
three should be sufficient to give us an idea of perfunctory.
Many factors contribute to the general apathy endemic in the public
workforce. They can be external factors as well as deep psychological
reasons.
Let us look at a few external factors before touching on a psychological
problem.
One exterior factor would be the low salaries for the many middle and
low-level public servants as indicated by the disclosure that 60,000 of
them either seek loans or live on borrowed money.
Their salaries have failed to keep up with increases in the prices of
goods and services, leaving the public servants further behind in their
effort to carve out a decent living for themselves and their families.
On the other hand, a few receive hefty salaries, perks and privileges
despite their minimal output which is a sad breach of justice.
Other exterior factors regarding perfunctory would be the unfavourable
working environment, in which the people, equipment, and the place are
non-conducive to performance.
Though space does not allow us to deal with more exterior factors, and
since perfunctory is something that deals with human attitude and habits
towards work, we can say that there are deep psychological reasons for
perfunctory.
I will deal with one of them.
Disparity in the personal values of a public servant and the core values
required by public institutions is an underlying cause of perfunctory.
Though value clarifications and value alignments cannot be adequately
dealt with in this column, preliminary explanation is necessary for
clarification. Let us take an example.
If a public servant has money as one of his cardinal value, he would be
seeking ways to make lots of money, no matter what it takes.
Thus, the value for money would necessarily engulf the value of service
embedded in the code of ethics of the public servants who would spend
most of their time playing pokies or visiting horse race venues.
The behaviour shows that there is value conflict happening in the
person.
Hence, work ethics and personal codes are in complete disagreement
causing behavioural conflict.
Since personal values are codes we cultivate that captivate and
influence our behaviour, they can easily override the dictate of
professional code of conducts.
It is imperative that the public service deal with this issue
immediately.
Finally, in my judgment, value disagreement is personal and deep in
everyone.
Only counselling and therapy, using lessons, visions and techniques of
psychosynthesis will provide an ultimate solution to the widespread
apathy in the work force.
Next week, we will deal with the lack of professionalism in the public
sector.
 
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