Mabuyane must take action against all incompetent workers

Premier Oscar Mabuyane is alert to most of the province’s challenges, and willing to take on board solutions advanced from various quarters. Sometimes those solutions are controversial, like his preference for a total ban on booze, or pie-in-the-sky, like his vision to have a field hospital in every district of the province. Certainly, Mabuyane cannot be faulted for his passion and hard work to advance the interests of the people of the province.

But are they enough, if these efforts are misplaced and the premier continues to ignore glaring problems in provincial departments and municipalities?

Right now, those problems are centered on education and health. The former may be laid at the door of basic education minister Angie Motshekga until a firm policy decision is taken on whether or not schools must remain open. On the shortcomings in health, Mabuyane has moved to appoint a Project Management Unit which, he says, will fundamentally transform the crisis-ridden health department, make it more efficient and effective in delivering services, through rapid responses and procurement measures.

We support Mabuyane’s move but it must be accompanied by a programme which will simultaneously root out the incompetent and the recalcitrant at every level within the department.

Otherwise, we must remain cynical that a corps of senior managers parachuted from elsewhere into a crisis-ridden department will deal appropriately with the twin systemic problems of corruption and maladministration.

To highlight any of the maladies which beset our province is only to remember the most recent, or the biggest, example of malfeasance or ineptitude; these events now appear in the media almost on a daily basis.

This week, we were alerted to the failure of officials in Nelson Mandela Bay Metro to accurately record the death count from the novel coronavirus. An investigation was started. We may never hear its outcome.

Certainly, it is unlikely the useless officials responsible will lose their jobs, despite their failure to perform having perverse implications for how the pandemic is managed in that metro.

Mabuyane must know that just one dismissal or arrest of an official who has acted in the worst possible interests of all the good people of this province will be a sign of hope to those who live here, and those across the country and around the world, that our slide into depredation can be stopped.

That first step must be followed by another, and many more after that.

We support Mabuyane’s move but it must be accompanied by a programme which will root out the incompetent at every level within the department