ZIMBABWE
The Zimbabwe Public Service Commission (PSC) has gone on the offensive, saying it is determined to weed out a culture of slothfulness among the country’s Government workers.
In an eight-point document distributed at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in the country’s second city of Bulawayo, the PSC said it wanted to inculcate a culture of leadership and patriotism into the Public Service.
“This is in line with President, Emmerson Mnangagwa’s vision to transform Zimbabwe into an upper–middle-income economy by 2030,” the PSC document said.
The PSC said there was an assumption held internationally that the country’s Public Service was incompetent and ran on nepotism.
“There is a pervasive perception that the Civil Service does not have a well-defined shared and inspirational culture,” the document said.
“This engenders undeserved impressions of arbitrariness, cluelessness, backwardness, listlessness, incapacity, carelessness, profligacy, unresponsiveness, desultoriness, favouritism, clique mentality, fear and corrupt esoteric elitism.”
The PSC said it was critical for the Government to come up with a new culture of doing things and it would be spearheading the process.
It said it would design a high-performance policy document for its staffers that also promoted patriotism.
“It is very imperative therefore that the Commission spearheads the development and integration of a new culture into the entire Civil Service,” the PSC document staid.
“The new culture blueprint must inculcate a set of values and ethics that promote servant leadership and embed patriotism.”
It said the cultural blueprint must also have an actionable and measurable program that fully acquainted all staff with the key elements of the national ethos and interests; clearly defined and enforced ethical conduct; imbued a high sense of patriotism and set out clear performance requirements and consequences for all staff.
The PSC said it also intended to address remuneration concerns, which lacked standardisation, saying the lack of a standardised institutional framework created labour disharmony thereby undermining productivity within the sector.
Bulawayo, 3 May 2019
