Government has just handed civil servants a salary increases. Now it wants to prove that the billions of Emalangeni paid every year in wages are buying better services for the public.
The Ministry of Public Service says it will now push ahead with a full performance management system that links pay to results, service quality and customer satisfaction.
Principal Secretary Mthunzi Shabangu said government has invested significantly in improving civil servants’ remuneration and now wants to measure whether that investment is translating into better performance and improved services.
Shabangu said the findings will help strengthen government’s quality management systems while informing future reforms across the public service.
The PS said the ministry also plans to shrink the civil service by around 2 000 posts through redeployment, natural attrition and possibly a voluntary exit scheme. “The aforementioned initiatives seek to reduce and/or manage the wage bill by approximately 2 000 employees in the medium term,” he said.
These are sensible goals. A wage bill that is set to swallow one in every three Emalangeni government spends cannot be ignored. PS Shabangu has made it clear that recruitment is no longer automatic. He says vacancies must first be justified by management audits and available budgets, which means ministries can no longer simply replace every person who leaves.
The old hiring freeze seems to have been lifted on paper, yet the controls remain tight. The aim is to keep the workforce closer to the current average of about 44 500 people while directing staff to where they are most needed, according to the PS in response to questioning from the Times of Eswatini.
The PS further disclosed that the ministry also wants money in the next financial year for nationwide customer satisfaction surveys. These surveys would ask ordinary citizens whether government departments are meeting their expectations. The findings would guide further reforms. On paper, the plan looks good as it will measure performance, contain costs and avoid forced retrenchments.
Yet one glaring gap remains unaddressed. While the public service ministry waits for a budget to run those surveys, government should first fix the everyday management of staff.
PS Shabangu has explained at length about management audits, alternative service delivery and tight recruitment controls. But no amount of performance tracking or automated payroll monitoring will fix a public service where the managers on the ground have no real power to manage. Principal Secretaries (PSs) are nominally the administrative heads of their respective ministries. They are the ones tasked with ensuring that deadlines are met, services are delivered and staff remain productive. Yet, when a civil servant refuses to work, displays blatant incompetence or engages in misconduct, the principal secretary is practically powerless.
That power sits largely with the Civil Service Commission. The result is a system that moves at a snail’s pace.
Cases drag on for years. Civil servants accused of misconduct or facing disciplinary processes are frequently sent home on full pay while the commission works through its backlog. Taxpayers foot the bill for people who are contributing nothing. Millions of Emalangeni leave the public purse every year for salaries that produce no service. Such a situation is the opposite of value for money.
If principal secretaries had clearer authority to manage and discipline staff under their control, problems could be dealt with faster and closer to the workplace. The Civil Service Commission would not face an overwhelming number of cases. Idle workers would not linger on the payroll for years. The Performance Management System government is so eager to roll out would stand a better chance of success if managers could actually manage.
Reducing numbers through attrition and voluntary exits is a careful approach. No one wants sudden mass job losses. But efficiency is not only about how many people are on the books. It is also about whether those people are working and whether their managers can insist that they do. Right now the system leans too heavily on a central commission that is clearly overstretched.
Government is right to link pay rises to better performance and to keep a firm grip on the wage bill. Surveys of public satisfaction will eventually tell us whether citizens notice any improvement. But while those surveys are still waiting for funding, the more immediate waste continues. Civil servants sitting at home on full salary are a daily reminder that process has triumphed over results.
Fix the balance of power between the principal secretaries and the Civil Service Commission. Give managers the tools to act promptly and fairly. Only then will the talk of performance management and a leaner civil service begin to mean something to the ordinary taxpayer who pays the bill.
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