Exorcise public service ghosts
Mmegi Editor | Friday May 20, 2016 11:32
Such an approach is sorely lacking at the Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM) where the axe has been hanging over the 129,947 staff complement since 2012 when planned cutbacks were first announced.
Two years ago the then DPSM director, Carter Morupisi revealed that about 115 ‘ghost employees’ had been uncovered in the government payroll with two ministries accounting for the majority of these. Ghost employees are former workers for whom a salary continues to be paid out from official employment, despite their departure for various reasons. We learnt this week that there are still ‘ghost employees’ in the public service.
The public service is spending millions annually paying workers who do not even exist within its ranks, while wielding the retrenchment axe on those workers who are actually in the trenches, getting dirt beneath their nails! At a time when wage talks at the Public Service Bargaining Council have stalled, it is disheartening for civil servants to hear that their employer continues to reward non-existent colleagues.
Rather than tackling the systemic inefficiencies causing these ‘ghost employees’ the employer was quick off the mark, introducing a range of cost-cutting initiatives such as outsourcing and the dreaded rationalisation.
Let’s put the situation into perspective.
Government is the single biggest employer in this economy, accounting for well over a third of formal sector employment and supporting hundreds of thousands in downstream and the informal sector jobs. The government’s wage bill is also the single largest payroll figure in the country and the single biggest expenditure item on the national recurrent budget, accounting for 44 percent this year.
In all likelihood, the ghost workers thus far uncovered are only the tip of an iceberg stretching through line ministries to the numerous obscure departments hiding in the dark recesses of the recurrent budget. In all likelihood taxpayers and the treasury are doling out millions of unnecessary pulas for workers who neither exist nor whose services benefit anyone.
Given its size, it would be remiss to expect the public service to operate at an optimal level of systemic efficiency. However, by the same token, no one expects it to be a gigantic, bungling mess of disorganisation and wastefulness.
Besides saving costs, an exorcism of ghost workers and other systemic inefficiencies is critical for optimal service delivery to Batswana and our foreign visitors, as well as the country’s international competitiveness and branding.
Today’s thought
“Obviously, the highest type of efficiency is that which can utilise existing material to the best advantage.”
- Jawaharlal Nehru