18 April 2008
editorial
Gaborone — During his inauguration on April 1, President Ian Khama announced the creation of a special cabinet committee to oversee the implementation of government projects and general service delivery.
Khama is well placed to work with such a structure since he has been grappling with the problems associated with poor implementation of government projects in the past few years. We have reason to believe that the President is conversant with such problems to provide the requisite guidance.
The costs related to poor implementation of public projects are not only wasteful of the meagre financial resources but are impediments to government's well intentioned programmes to improve the peoples' standards of living. Over the years, government has been losing millions of Pula through shoddy implementation of public projects. The problem pervades all sectors - be it construction of infrastructure or supply of goods and services. Examples abound of poorly constructed or abandoned schools, clinics, roads and others because of shoddy workmanship. Paradoxically, no public servant is ever made to account for the state of affairs. No punitive measures are taken against anybody when there are delays or poor workmanship. Instead the government is made to pay extra for the delays and inferior work. Ba ko ga mma-pereko. It is always business as usual.
However, we take solace in the fact that the Khama administration has made it crystal clear that the laissez-faire days are over and accounting officers will be held responsible for any slip-ups. We have no doubt that the special committee should succeed given the new mind-set in government and the fact that that the second most powerful man in the land has been charged with driving this positive and necessary process. Mompati Merafhe is known to be a slave driver and his skills should come handy in this regard. Bureaucratic systems tend to place emphasis on hierarchy but the fact that the process is being driven by the second-in-command should make the task at hand achievable. Those weeded-out for non-performance should be furnished with their shortcomings to avoid charges of witch-hunting. Where public servants are found to have been motivated by greed, they should face the full wrath of the law.
We hope the new committee will not only serve as a reminder to public servants as to what their vocation is, but it will restore public trust in our civil service. We believe the civil service will appreciate the government's new mindset. After all, in the past few years, government has spent millions of Pula in programmes aimed at improving the productivity of the civil service. There has been countless workshops and seminars on the Work Improvement Teams (WITS), the Performance Management Systems (PMS) and the Performance-Based Reward System (PBRS) among others. It is time to put them to good use.
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