Changes needed in public service

PUBLIC servants, as government workers are known in Papua New Guinea, are among the better paid workers in this country.
Their employer, the National Government, rarely fails to pay them on time every fortnight whether they actually do any work or not.
The public service is a contented workforce and most, if not all, public servants will gladly attest that it is a real privilege to be employed by the Government.
Indeed, public servants consider the Government as the ideal employer, which condones their inefficiencies and pays them very good wages despite the desperate cries of our people for improved service delivery.
However, they are despised by the wider community which sees an inefficient and ineffective public service as a major stumbling block to further development and growth in PNG.
Among the critics is the country’s top public servant, Chief Secretary Isaac Lupari, who has lambasted the government work force for being “dysfunctional, weak and ineffective”.
Lupari assumed the top post in February following the retirement of Sir Manasupe Zurenuoc and has been reorganising and rejuvenating the public service through initiatives such as bi-monthly meetings of departmental heads.
He has also clamped down on the costly manner in which government departments and agencies operate.
Lupari admits that the public service he inherited lacks professionalism, capacity and skills.
As well, there are no ethical standards and job promotions are based on “who you know and not what you know”.
“There is a lot of duplication and overlap, no coordination and many departments have become project managers, designers and implementers. Departments like Education and Health have become project managers and hence have little time and resources for quality control and regulations. If PNG is to move forward, the public service must be tackled head on. This requires leadership at all levels,” Lupari told The National yesterday.
We commend the chief secretary for his initiative to gather his departmental heads twice a month to discuss pertinent issues affecting their sectors of responsibility.
The next meeting will be held on Friday at the Bomana Police College which will focus on the law and order sector.
Lupari is a man on a mission, assigned by the political leadership to overhaul the public service to be a more efficient and effective machinery to deliver the Government’s policy initiatives and programmes to the majority of our people.
He is adamant that public servants must take ownership of their responsibilities and ensure that they serve the people diligently and without fear or favour.
Similar sentiments were echoed by Vice Minister for Finance Benjamin Phillip last year when he lashed out at the bureaucracy, saying the financing of the public service from the national and provincial recurrent budget was overly expensive.
In calling for the public service to be overhauled to be cost-effective, Phillip said:
“Most public servants are being paid for doing nothing or doing minimal work, yet the system we have in place continues to pay them for their inefficiencies and ineffectiveness in executing government directives for services to trickle down to the people.”
We couldn’t agree more with both the chief secretary and vice minister that the current public service machinery is inefficient and costly.
It needs to be overhauled immediately to bring back productivity that would reflect in the services provided to our people.
In fact, the public service machinery has not undergone any drastic structural and operational changes since PNG inherited the system from its colonial master, Australia, more than 40 years ago.
What has changed during this period has been the mindset and work output of our public servants.
While there are many public servants who work tirelessly to serve the Government of the day, there are many more who are totally inefficient and are a burden on the country’s annual budget.
These are the type of public servants who are making a mockery of the system by being regularly absent from work but still front up at the ATMs (automated telling machines) on paydays to swipe their bank cards and get free pay for doing nothing.
Drastic changes to the public service must ensure that government workers are paid according to the time they spend at work, just like private sector employees.