SERVICING THE PUBLIC WITH INTEGRITY

SEPTEMBER is Public Service Month, and this year’s celebrations should not only be used to pay tribute to the work of public servants.

The celebrations must also be used to cast the spotlight on the kind of qualities that public servants ought to display to overcome the triple challenge of inequality, poverty and unemployment.

The first and probably single most important one is a conviction in incorruptibility and commitment to serving the public.

At all times we must be guided by professional ethics, which require us to take the lived reality of our people into account, and to not impose our will on them.

In this regard, we must listen attentively to what their needs, interests and desires are. In the past 25 years of our democracy, there are men and women who have been alive to these imperatives and have remained steadfast to serving all South Africans with excellence.

This year’s theme for the commemoration, Public Service Month

(khawuleza): taking services to the people: “we belong, we care, we serve”, is a call to ask ourselves whether or not we have done what is required of us to make a change in the lives of the needy.

One often hears that public servants have an exceptional talent for laziness. If this is true, then the material conditions of the people, which are largely determined by the conduct of the public servants, are far from being changed.

However, this should not deter the hard-working public servants to call out those that are not placing a premium on their work to make a difference. Instead, working with the public, they should place high demands on every other public servant to deliver impeccable work that fulfils the needs of the people.

Every public servant is not only expected to provide a service, but a service of the highest quality.

Public servants should guard against anyone who displays tendencies that seek to undermine government work by taking from the fiscus.

Government resources should only be used for the objective of improving the lives of the people – and nothing else. This is, moreover, important given the present financial situation of the country.

To achieve the noble objectives of the National Development Plan, the Department of Water and Sanitation, which is a custodian of water resources in the country, seeks to draw not only suitable skills, but public servants that display conduct that is commensurate to the needs of our developing nation.

Our water challenges in the country are begging for the appropriate skills and discipline towards which all public servants must strive.

The celebration of Public Service Month must also serve as a call on us as public servants, for an even greater effort to conduct ourselves within the confines of acceptable standards.

At all times we must conduct the business of government with integrity and concern for the interest of communities.

Public servants are not only required to provide a service, but one of the highest quality