O’Neill: Public servants lack discipline

 THE lack of discipline among public servants has been a major obstacle to development and service delivery in the country, Parliament was told yesterday. 

During the debate over the review of the public service in the country, MPs including Prime Minister Peter O’Neill condemned the lack of discipline which had been tolerated over the years in government departments and agencies.  

Sumkar MP Ken Fairweather said the problem of limited service delivery was not due to the lack of policies or staff capacity or the working system but work discipline that is lacking in public servants. 

“Unless there is discipline, no public servant will do his responsibility in ensuring the department meets its goals of delivering basic services to the population,” he said.

“All around and everywhere in the public service there is lack of discipline by public servants. It is not really the lack of policies or low number of staff but discipline.

“The Government must ensure that discipline on public servants is applied to get work down to the local level otherwise it is just the talking and the reform is not effective.”