In an effort to enhance performance and service delivery, governments worldwide have sought to borrow structures and best practice from the private sector. Hence the move to ‘corporotise’ entire departments or service centres has become the norm.
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South Africa has not been immune to this trend, and all spheres of government have adopted this practise with great zeal. The general thinking is that you take an existing department and restructure and retrain the incumbent staff and managers to operate and think like private sector organisations.
Increased costs
Alas, the results have been disastrous to say the least. Instead of improving efficiency, the reverse has happened. The process has been hijacked by vested interests and the ruling party as an opportunity for patronage through the procurement system, and cadre deployment. Layers and layers of new personnel have been added to existing staff numbers, resulting in massive duplication and increased costs.
Think about the old South African Railways and Harbours (SAR&H) that split into Transnet, Prasa and Autopax (to name a few), all with their own boards of directors, head offices and management. None of them have been immune to scandals and corrupt practises, and it is arguable whether service delivery has improved in any way.
Maladministration
At local government level, most of the large metros have created separate companies to manage services that were line functions within the structures. Johannesburg created the Johannesburg Road Agency to manage its roads, Pik-It-Up for refuse collection and a plethora of others, most of which are also plagued by poor management and maladministration.
While it must be conceded that the need to equitably extend services to the entire population post1994 would have placed existing institutions under enormous pressure, the rush to the ‘corporate model’ has done the process no favours.
Again, rather than rationalisation and better staff efficiency, more management levels and boards were created, resulting in the larger portion of their budgets being swallowed up by running costs, drastically reducing the budget available for actual service delivery.
Evidence
The reputation of national government state owned entities (SOE) such as SAA, Eskom and Denel has been dragged through the mud, deservedly, as evidence at the Zondo Commission has shown. But the problems of SOEs are spread throughout all spheres of government.
After matriculating, Vijay Naidoo studied Economics in the UK. Upon his return, hejoined the family construction business as MD for 10 years.
He subsequently joined his sister in their furniture manufacturing business as director for quality assurance and operations. He was responsible for all quality aspects of their products, and led the project to the business achieving an ISO 9000 quality accreditation. As an export focused business, this was important for our international competitiveness.
Mr Naidoo has an abiding interest in quality management and productivity improvement, particularly in manufacturing.
More recently, he has focused a lot of his time on giving back to the community by way of mentorship of small businesses and sitting on the executive of the South Coast Chamber of Commerce. He also sits on the Board of the Ugu South Coast Development Agency.
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