IT is a bold move. If it succeeds, then Papua New Guinea may have found a way to fast track our lumbering and inefficient public service.
It is plainly nonsense to have some 70,000 public servants employed in a nation of six million people – unless they consistently provide innovative, high quality services.
Few readers will disagree that our public service is a white elephant on a grand scale.
Prior to 1986, most public service powers lay with a technically independent body, the Public Services Commission.
Those powers included recruitment, training, promotion, discipline, dismissal and even appeal against dismissal.
There was a great deal of opposition to this centralised power and a charismatic and hard-working leader of the time, Sir Anthony Siaguru, who was held the Public Services portfolio, set about establishing a power group to re-invent the public service.
The results were reflected in the markedly different Public Services Management Act of 1986.
One of the clear aims of that legislation, which stripped the Commission of the majority of its powers, was to create a pro-active public service with a high level of provincial powers and expertise.
It was a brilliant concept.
It foundered on one immovable rock – the blunt refusal of the majority of public servants to work and live outside of Port Moresby, Lae and possibly one or two other provincial capitals.
The devolution of powers to the provinces could amount to little in the face of this refusal.
For there proved to be alarmingly few highly trained public servants prepared to take up appointments outside of the cities.
Since then, there have been readjustments to the powers of the PSC, and some of the old bite has been returned to what is meant to be an independent watchdog.
The commission, at least in theory, is supposed to be consulted before the most senior level of public service appointments are made.
Unfortunately there is a depressing tendency among provincial officials and ministers to simply bulldoze the appointment of political cronies or relatives. In other words, the commission risks being ignored when its advice is most needed.
Yesterday’s report in The National indicated that dismissal of public servants on the spot by an initially tiny handful of authorities would now be accepted by the Government.
No doubt a list of the offences for which public servants can be summarily dismissed will appear soon; hopefully it will be accompanied by the outlines of a process of appeal that may be undertaken by sacked public servants.
The choice of officials to trial this sweeping change is interesting; it ranges from long-serving administrators through relatively new department heads to the director of the Institute of Public Administration and the head of Madang’s Modilon Hospital.
The comment was made that there are risks associated with this move.
They are indeed obvious.
Should any of the delegated authorities decide to indulge in personal vendettas against disliked rivals, it may prove difficult indeed for the dismissed persons to receive justice.
Absolute power does indeed corrupt, and the exercise of these new powers might be so abused.
At this point, however, let’s look on the positive side.
The public service, vast and immovable, has been for decades a giant obstacle to real progress and development.
It has slowed down PNG’s growth in two directions.
On the domestic front it has long become a millstone around the neck of real progress.
New laws have been created with wild abandon; PNG must be one of the most over-governed developing countries in the world.
Many of those laws are petty and obscure; they were drafted to serve political ends or personal agendas. They are resurrected only by bureaucrats anxious to take refuge behind “the law”.
The result is that even the simplest public service process has become so mired in red tape that the whole system could conceivably grind to a halt.
As for overseas investors, travellers, businessmen and even tourists, the protracted agonies of our immigration and visa laws almost defy belief.
If the brutal new approach about to be tried is effective, then perhaps PNG has found a new and quicker way to achieve desirable results.
Only time will tell.