LEAN & ‘MAWGAH’ GOVERNMENT
This was my first official column, and before 10 a.m. on the day of publication, the Cabinet secretary called me to find out where I got my information; I refused to answer, of course. He then called the director of fisheries and threatened him with arrest for breaching the Official Secrets Act by telling me that he had staff vacancies. Jamaica has more press freedom today. Published February 17, 1993.
IN THE name of efficienc y, successive governments have presided over the withering away of the Jamaican Civil Service to about half its 1977 size. The civil service, we were told, was ‘fat’ and overstaffed after years of patronage-hiring. Reducing the staff complement – we were assured – would lead to a ‘lean’ and efficient Government. But when will this materialise? Have we cut enough?
What mechanisms drive the current ‘restructuring’ process? What has determined the nature and extent of staff cuts over the last few years? Thousands of civil servants have been sacrificed at the altar of efficiency, but, as things stand now, efficienc y itself has been sacrificed. When the staff complement of any department is reduced below its ability to function effectively, this also produces inefficiency, and this is what has happened, and is still happening, in sections of the government service.
More and deeper cuts are scheduled for later this year. When will the cuts end? What mechanisms are i n place to detect when we have attained optimality? We all want lean and efficient government, not an emaciated and ‘mawgah’ State bureaucracy.
Take a look at how our publicsector pension cheques are perennially late, resulting in untold hardships to senior citizens: to obtain birth certificates from the Registrar General’s O ffice can take months; it takes years for the Titles Office to issue registered titles or subdivisions; cases take years to go through the courts; the few public health inspectors can barely manage to do meat inspections and their other duties go largely unattended; and it goes on and on.
A rational goal like efficiency requires rational means to attain it, and a rational system to perpetuate it. The way the staff cuts have been approached is not rational: some department and section heads have been instructed to cut personnel by an arbitrary percentage rather than asked to determine the optimal number of staff required to do the job efficiently and to reduce/increase the staff complement to that number. In the context of staff shortages, to be asked to reduce staff further is to risk the resignations of the overworked few who remain.
‘FROZEN’ POSTS
A good case study is the Fisheries Division of the Ministry of Agriculture. This division has a professional staff complement of eight, comprising a director, a deputy director and six fisheries officers. All six posts for fisheries officers are currently vacant and have been vacant for some years. They have now been frozen.
Both the director and the deputy director are acting in their posts. Even if the fisheries officer posts were not frozen, it is unlikely that they would be filled, as they are classified as the lowest grade of graduate appointment and the salaries are very low, even after the Administrative Reform Programme.
These two officers are required to carry out all the fisheries research and management functions outlined in the Fisheries Act and Regulations. Also employed are minimum clerical and ancillary staff and 12 ‘fisheries instructors’ and ‘fisheries wardens’ in the various parishes to enforce the law and regulations at the 213 fishlanding sites across Jamaica.
Their duties include investigating and recommending fishers and boats to be licensed and registered; the selling of the subsidised fuel for outboard motors; to inspect beaches, especially during the closed season for lobster; investigating and reporting on maritime pollution; monthly reports on catch; and the inspection of fishing licences.
The Fisheries Division has been asked to cut staff further. At present, it is incapable of fulfilling its mandate under the law, and, due to staff shortages, is unable now to access all the benefits available under the CIDA-funded CARICOM Fisheries Resource Assessment and Management Programme. Further staff cuts – which are imminent – are irrational in this context.
This scenario is all too common. It leads one to think that the staff cuts are really not to increase efficiency but simply to decrease government spending, whatever the cost. Whether or not, what has resulted is a false-front Government – what we call ‘shaping’ in Jamaica: having the form of a state bureaucracy for show but without the substance to actually function well.
NEW BEGINNING
Jamaica needs a new beginning. Yes, there may have been a time when there was “fat” in the civil service which deserved to be cut, and should have been cut; but there is still need for a full management audit of the civil service to determine where the inefficiencies are, and this should guide future cuts.
There is also a level of inefficienc y due t o sk impy incentives and a poor work ethic that staff cuts alone will not address. Civil servants at all levels must be paid what they are worth, and must be required to perform – or face recall. The whole tenor of the service needs a new beginning, and bright, young talent must be recruited. This is the sort of reform needed in the civil service at this time.
The Government has the duty to finance the administrative infrastructure the country needs. Pleading “resource constraints” is believable in the short term, but where are the long-term plans to finance an efficient state apparatus? After a while, pleas of “scarcity of resources” should be heard for what they really are – bad planning and lousy management.
The moves to spread the tax net wider are welcome, especially to bring i nto the system the many lawyers and doctors and other middle-class professionals who have not been making their fair contribution. But other revenue sources need to be explored. The system of licences and other fees needs revision so that stakeholders can bear more of the burden of the administration of their sectors.
To continue the example from Fisheries, it is difficult to explain why in 1993 there is no charge for a fisherman’s licence, and why the cost for a special licence to fish on the Pedro Banks is 10 Jamaican cents per annum. The paper and i nk to issue the licence cost more than that, and the rationale for that level of licence fee is unclear.
Let us reject a definition which equates efficiency simply with a balanced Budget and neglecting performance criteria. ‘Administrative reform’ and ‘restructuring’ must come to mean that we obtain a lean and healthy Government, not an emaciated and ‘mawgah’ state bureaucracy.