Impunity the reason civil servants do not learn

Mmegi Editor | Thursday June 22, 2017 17:24

These proceedings are held in public, thanks to a decision eight years ago when former Vice President Ponatshego Kedikilwe was chairing the committee.

The PAC proceedings are part of a report that would ultimately be issued by the Auditor General (AG). These are crucial oversight institutions that give the public an idea of how the government funds were expended on behalf of the public.

The most disturbing observation however, is the continuous repeat of serious breaches by government officials mandated to take care of our resources. There are careless accounting activities that have the potential to result in loss of public funds, inconvenience of intended beneficiaries of the approved funds, and even corruption.

In the 2016 Auditor General’s report, it is indicated that there was a time when over P1-billion from the Ministry of Education and Skills Development was lying idle in ‘space’ because an officer forgot to do his/her work to finalise the transaction. Obviously, the time that the money was staying un-used has resulted in serious inconveniences for the beneficiaries – the students who were under government sponsorship.

This could have resulted in late payments of their allowances, landlords kicking them out of their rented houses, or the students being unable to attend lessons as scheduled. The AG also found idle funds that were intended for poverty eradication projects. The list is endless.

This shows how there are incompetent officers in the civil service who are unable to perform their duties, and therefore causing serious inconveniences to other citizens. Year after year, these officers appear before the PAC and other institutions to defend or explain the same mistakes they committed the previous year. Time has come for punitive measures to be taken against incompetent officers in the civil service, whose laziness has many implications such as rising crime, unemployment and poverty, or even loss of life in some instances. People holding public office should appreciate the fact that they are there on behalf of the public and hence their mistakes have serious implications.

We cannot continue to run the country like a spaza shop where the owner is the boss to his/her customers.

In other countries, where accountability is given priority, a public officer who is unable to perform his/her duties resulting in public inconveniences is forced to resign.

We are yet to witness that in our beloved country. What the civil servants are good at is defending each other through press rebuttals and use of state media. This should come to a stop if we are serious about taking our country forward.

Today’s thought

The civil service can never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law.

 

– James A. Garfield