90% of officials’ work time wasted

President of Kuwait’s National Competiveness Committee Dr Fahd Al-Rashid said 90 percent of senior officials’ time at ministries and government agencies is wasted on jobs others can perform, while they can concentrate on their duties to improve governmental performance. Rashid said during a workshop that included many top officials, “we asked them to show us how they spend their working hours, estimated to be eight hours a day, only to reach a conclusion that 90 percent of the time is wasted on signing papers and meeting people who are not necessary to meet, in addition to meetings that are not part of their work”.

Rashid added that due to this, many problems appear in the government departments’ performance, especially since the time of these officials is wasted on activities that are away from their duties, and this reflects on the rest of workers, leading to a drop in results for Kuwait on many economic indicators on the competitiveness scale.

Rashid said the true duties of senior officials are concentrated in several major aspects that revolve around giving instructions, incentives and supervision in order to reach better performance, and not to participate in executive matters that take them away from practicing in the true job duties required from senior officials. He said that directing by planning and follow-up to enhance services presented to the public and raising work performance at government bodies are within the priority list of senior officials besides their duties, which must take up the lion’s share of their time.