Take a quick scan of the jobs section of any major newspaper and two things will jump out at you.
The first is that the overwhelming majority of the positions on offer are in the government sector and secondly, that they are mainly for senior management postings. While there are the odd mid and entry level positions on offer, they are very much the exception. So the question to be asked is who are these top managers managing? Is it not a case of ’ too many Chiefs and too few Indians’?
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Few would begrudge a civil service that concentrates on recruiting and capacitating the actual deliverers of service to the public: the water and electrical engineers and technicians, the traffic and waste management professionals, the frontline staff at government offices that actually interface with the public.
Adding insult to injury, is the fact that the cadre deployment policy employed by the ruling party has resulted in often cases the capacity and qualifications of incumbents being in inverse proportion to those required for the seniority of the post. In April, Minister of Public Service and Administration revealed that 3301 out of 9477 senior mangers in the public service did not have the required qualifications for their posts.
Of course the question must arise, what value is added by the layers and layers of management above the actual ‘shop floor’ or in the case of the public service point of delivery. A case in point: an advertisement by the KZN provincial government for a ‘Deputy Director: VIP Support’ caught my eye recently. At a salary package of R733 000 at the core, this position provided that an MEC (one of 10 in the KZN Executive Council) was treated with the requisite protocol and deference his position deserved.
It is safe to assume that the other nine MECs departments had the same post, meaning essentially that over R7 million rand was allocated to protection of protocol and VIP status.
Value added to the citizens of KZN? Next to nothing. Value added to the culture of self importance and status of the MECs? Immeasurable.
Until the professionalisation, capacitation and culture of the public service receives the attention and political will it deserves not much will change in the short term.
Vijay Naidoo is the CEO of the Port Shepstone Business Forum. He writes in his personal capacity.The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.
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