Editor’s note: Lowvelder’s new year’s resolution

If a spokesman is incompetent or unreliable, it reflects badly on the department or institution he represents. After all, a media spokesman is supposed to be his bosses’ window to the outside world.

Lowvelder relies heavily on the goodwill, efficiency and trustworthiness of government spokesmen in order to fulfil its responsibilities of fair and balanced news reports and feature articles to its readers in the community.

Therefore, it is important that good and sound professional relationships between reporters and spokesmen exist on a continuous basis.

As editor of Lowvelder I put a lot of emphasis on well-balanced articles, allowing both sides of a story the opportunity to comment on issues.

That said, I have to admit that it is not always easy for journalists to get the necessary information and comments from spokesmen who are in some cases not accessible, like not taking phone calls, ignoring email enquiries, and despite promises of responding to questions, merely going underground on deadline.

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Since I took office as editor almost three years ago, I picked up the daily frustration of my editorial team due to the non-performance of spokesmen in providing the service they are paid for with taxpayers’ money.

I am sure in many cases their bosses are not aware of this situation although it publicly sheds a bad light on the work they do.

It would be interesting to know how many of Mpumalanga’s government spokesmen are political appointees and how many were really appointed based on merits and their possessing the required qualifications for their positions.

It will be interesting to know how the government media teams will perform in the run-up to next year’s much-awaited general election.

I am sure each and every politician and top government official would like to put his/her best foot forward to survive the election.

This is where the official spokesmen will have to come out of the blocks to prove their mettle. In the meantime the dismal performance of some of them at present do not reflect well on the people they are supposed to represent and, as from today, Lowvelder will start monitoring all these spokesmen’s performances.

These individuals bear the mandate of serving the public through, among other things, efficient communication with the press.

When they fail the public’s right to receive information on matters affecting them, it is directly prejudiced. This has motivated Lowvelder to keep track of spokesmen’s performance to establish whether these government employees are fulfilling their mandates.

Every journalist will carefully document, among other things, their media enquiries, the availability of the officials, the feedback and updates on media enquiries.

Towards the end of next year the scorecards will be presented to the departments and institutions for comment before publishing each and every spokesman’s work performance (and service delivery to the public) through 2019.