Civil servants should earn their keep

Over a third of our taxes go towards civil service staff costs, and we all pay taxes even if it is only VAT and the two percent transfer tax on our phone money, plus a higher percentage of our rates, add a decent slice of what we pay for other services from State enterprises such as Zesa.

So we all want to see these large numbers of people earning their money, and giving us value for what we pay them. There was a time when all a civil servant really had to do was turn up to work on time each day and breathe. Those days are long gone.

So the performance contracts introduced by the Government and pressed very hard by President Mnangagwa are an idea whose time has definitely come. In some ways, like so many other reforms, it is a pity this particular reform needed an activist President and the Second Republic to be turned into reality.

President Mnangagwa has made it clear that so far as he is concerned the main thrust of the contracts is to ensure there is action, and the right action at that. No one gets set targets for talking, writing memoranda or passing the buck. They are judged on what they do, and what they and their department or ministry or local authority or parastatal or university do successfully.

Some of the targets are in many ways routine matters. For example, the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament, getting very weary at having to go through reports from the Auditor General detailing sloppy accounting across swathes of the public sector, wants everyone to be keeping the sort of detailed accounts at the high standard demanded by the Auditor General.

The committee and the Auditor General would both rather be doing value for money audits and investigations, with those on contract doing the routine stuff properly and automatically, since that would expand efficiency and help those on the new performance contracts to make the best use of their resources to achieve the real goals, of making life better for the people of Zimbabwe, which is after all why we accept taxation.

So the targets set, through negotiation, for the more than 500 people on State performance contracts, the top couple of layers of the State sector, will need to be continually updated. The National Development Strategy 1, and the annual budgets of the Government, the local authorities, the State enterprises and the State universities list what needs to be done each year.

The contracts then turn these strategies into the detailed work that each particular person needs to do. Buck passing is no longer an option.

Taking a few examples, we know we need more electricity to make the economy we already have work better and to ensure that it can grow. Sometimes we have seen civil servants in the Energy Ministry blaming Zesa and Zesa blaming the civil servants, with both blaming the Finance Ministry.

Presumably the new contracts lay down precisely what each relevant senior civil servant in the two ministries has to do this year, which might include one director having to ensure electricity is used more efficiently and some security officer making sure equipment is not stolen, and what the head of Zesa has to do. Excuses are no longer accepted, and that means if required support is not forthcoming, then the contracted person needs to move swiftly to make sure that it is, rather than just wring their hands.

Perhaps at a lower but more immediate level, some Harare department head will have the target of collecting garbage frequently, which will involve another department head having the target of keeping the trucks on the road, which will have someone else with the target of buying enough spare parts in time and so someone else will have the target to make sure the rates are collected so there is money to buy the parts. With these set targets it will be easy to establish who precisely is not doing their job and for remedial action to be taken promptly.

This need to continually monitor performance, with a lot of the monitoring being done by others on contract in the chain, is as important as the need to find out who are the real gems in the State sector, those who can meet and exceed their targets, and who are the time servers who need to get a grip on their department or ministry or undertaking to start delivering.

No one in a complex operation like a Government, local authority or a parastatal works totally independently and so contracts need to be linked, but the fact that the contracts exist means that those whose links are not functioning needs to move up the ladder at speed to get the linked officials to meet their targets so they can reach theirs.

In the old days, like last year, it might have been okay to blame someone else. Now the question arises of what did you do, and again your success is doing the right thing at the right time because you are judged on results, not on who wins the blame game.

This is what already exists in the private sector, or at least the successful parts of that sector. A production manager is judged on what they produce, and if they have to move heaven and earth to get the maintenance manager to make sure the machine produces and the finance manager to buy the spares and raw materials, then that comes with the territory.

There are no blame games in a really successful company, except in the sense that trouble is identified early and if necessary someone is "spoken to" and if they have not reformed by next month their successor will probably be better.

The private sector has also found that this does require managers to move out of their silos, and that sort of attitude will be needed in the public sector, that keeping a nice neat file is not nearly so useful as having a list of the mobile phone numbers of the people you need to do their job so you can do yours.

The critical word in the new system of performance contracts is "performance".