THE civil service encompasses all government employees, who work in various ministries, municipalities, agencies, state-owned enterprises, education, healthcare, the criminal justice system (police, judges, government lawyers and prisons), etc.
Since they constitute a considerable proportion of the government’s yearly expenditure, it is essential that the civil service is fit-for-purpose, efficient and capable to deliver on its mandate.
Any complacency pertaining to how the public service is structured and performs can easily lead to the wastage of government resources, poor national economic performance and a backsliding, regarding the country's socio-economic development (education, health, citizens' access to modern infrastructure, etc).
In Zimbabwe, the public wage bill used to take up as much as 92% of the government's total financial resources, each year. This unsustainable situation persisted through to 2017.
The danger in this is that when the government's finances are heavily committed towards the public wage bill, there will not be enough funds to do other critical and productive tasks, such as maintenance of public infrastructure (power stations, hospitals, schools, roads, railway, water reticulation, etc), expanding infrastructure, supporting more social services (education, healthcare, policing, assistance to the disabled and orphans, etc), and repayment of outstanding government debt.
The situation eventually got rectified upon the appointment of Professor Mthuli Ncube to the Finance ministry. This will be one of his honourable legacies, whenever he decides to exit the role.
As of January-September 2024, the civil service wage bill had moderated to around 46% of the government's total expenditures. This is much better than the preceding years, although it is still unsustainable.
In South Africa, for example, the compensation of government employees made up 36,6% of total government expenditure in the 2021/22 financial year.
It is, therefore, critical for institutions, such as the Public Service Commission (PSC), the Public Service ministry and non-governmental organisations, to evaluate the relevance and suitability of the country's civil service to the needs of the citizens.
What to assess
In an attempt to determine the suitability of the country's public service, civil servants will have to be assessed on a number of metrics. These are outlined below.
The level of professionalism and ethics of government workers will need to be comprehensively analysed.
When public servants are able to report for work on time; treat citizens, who visit their offices with dignity; are not politically aligned in the execution of their duties; and can efficiently provide the goods and services, which they are mandated to supply, then they would be of benefit to both the government, which employs them and the country at large.
Professional competence is, therefore, of great importance. It will not make sense if the public wage bill increases, whilst the public service, being provided to citizens, declines.
The efficiency of the civil service is a point of interest. Government workers should be able to use resources (including finances) efficiently and effectively. In this regard, issues, such as wasteful, fruitless or irregular (suspicious) expenditure, should not be associated with an upright civil service.
The more that such problems (wasteful spending) become prominent, would imply that the country's civil service is no longer fit-for-purpose. Instead of being an enabler of socio-economic progress, an irresponsible civil service is a cost to both the government and the citizens.
The public service should also be inclusive and representative of the country's broader population. That means, people from different social and economic backgrounds should be sufficiently represented in as many government branches as possible.
This implies incorporating Shona, Ndebele, male, female, black, coloured (mixed-race), white, Asian, urban and rural citizens in the civil service, such that it becomes a fair representation of Zimbabwean society.
It is crucial to get that right because that would produce balance and dynamism, which the different employees would help to provide. Diversity of the public service will also help to reduce prejudice towards customers from different backgrounds, as they engage with the civil service.
The number of workers in the civil service needs to be evaluated. It is crucial to assess the different branches of the civil service in order to ensure that they are neither bloated (with excess employees) nor too lean.
A lack of sufficient workers can lead to the erosion of the quality of services offered to the citizens and impede economic growth, among other things. On the other hand, a bloated civil service can be expensive for the government, thereby, causing reduced government expenditure on infrastructure, etc.
So, Zimbabwe needs to determine if the number of police officers, health workers, public school teachers, etc, is sufficient or not. Every government ministry, agency, state-owned entity, will need to be assessed for that.
Where possible, irrelevant government agencies need to be closed down, so that their employees are incorporated elsewhere in government, or retrenched.
The salaries earned by the civil service should also be evaluated for adequacy. This is because, once workers fail to earn a decent wage, they will be demotivated or even be driven to be corrupt.
Poor remuneration may cause public servants to treat citizens with contempt. It is noteworthy to emphasise that in other countries, civil servants are handsomely rewarded for their labour.
In South Africa, for example, public sector employees are paid about 25% more than their counterparts in the private sector. This is particularly true for mid-level civil servants in that country (South Africa).
A failure to pay adequate wages can also lead to the migration of the most skilled workers from the public sector to the private sector. The skills erosion would result in incompetence in the civil service, along with poor service delivery.
More suggestions
In order to have a first-rate (highly efficient) public service, the PSC needs to be given authority so that its recommendations for areas of improvement in the civil service are legally binding.
The PSC should, therefore, regularly investigate the state of the civil service so that it can enforce order and competence through its authority.
Public sector employees should be held to account for their performance. Excellence or even the failure to deliver in their duties should be accompanied by swift and commensurate consequences. So far, consequence-management does not seem to be prominent in Zimbabwe's civil service.
Civil servants should be hired based on merit, instead of other considerations, such as political affiliation or tribal background.
In order for the government to have a capable and right-sized public service, citizens, who dwell in isolated areas should be relocated so that they are agglomerated in accessible locations, such as village service centres (growth points), etc.
This will reduce the demand on the quantity of civil servants and public goods and services needed to serve the citizens.
The government also needs to create a business-friendly environment, so that it can attract more tax-paying economic activities to the country. The additional tax revenues can be essential in supporting the civil service wage bill and other productive endeavours.
Greater economic activities actually mean that, more citizens will be able to contribute financially (through taxes) towards the public goods and services which they use. However, if there is widespread poverty, there would be too few productive people who contribute towards the public goods and services used by the citizens.
The result is that, the government's expenditure towards the civil service wage bill would be too high, in proportion to its total budget and also GDP. In South Africa, for example — 95% of all personal income tax is paid by 15% of workers in the formal sector, whilst 97% of all corporate income tax is paid by only 3.5% of formal companies.
That essentially means that, if the South African government needs to expand the availability of public goods and services, it will firstly need to create an environment which makes the untaxed individuals and companies more productive, so that they also can contribute to government revenue and its capacity to provide additional and higher-quality public goods and services.
Encouraging the displacement (replacement) of the informal sector by the formal sector, would also have the same positive results of greater government tax revenues.
Ideally, labour laws should permit the repurposing and fluidity of civil servants. For example, military staff should be able to assist in crime intelligence (under the police), hospitals, state-owned corporations, and other government agencies, when the country is not at war.
This can also be made to apply to teachers, and other government workers. Such fluidity can help to address labour shortages and the government’s limited financial resources.
Technology can also be used to reduce corruption and encourage higher productivity. For example, users of chronic medication for diseases such diabetes, HIV and tuberculosis may be given an option to have their medication delivered to their homes and offices, instead of visiting public healthcare facilities each time that they need to replenish their merchandise.
Blockchain technology can be used to reduce corruption. The removal of preferential procurement (such as local indigenisation laws) in government procurement can also lead to savings, which the government can re-channel towards sustaining its civil service.
Some government ministries and their respective employees may also need to be merged, where possible. For example, the Ministries of Agriculture and Environment, and their respective employees may be incorporated into one lean Ministry, which oversees the activities of the two ministries.
Workers, who will be made redundant by the consolidation, can be repurposed for other government departments and agencies. In Germany for example, there are only 15 cabinet ministers for the population of 83 million people.
In the United States of America - there are 24 cabinet ministers for the 346 million inhabitants. On the other hand, Zimbabwe has 26 cabinet ministers for a population of only 16 million people.
So, if the opportunity to merge government ministries is feasible, it should be utilised. Going forward, the government should limit the creation of new agencies, as much as possible, so that any new public initiatives are managed by existing government ministries and branches.
Lower-priority agencies and programmes should be forgone, in favour of sufficient and adequately staffed frontline workers, like educators, nurses, doctors, and police.
In conclusion, it is essential that relevant Zimbabwean stakeholders evaluate the state of the country's civil service throughout its whole hierarchy. Any findings to be made by the stakeholders should be used to inform the restructuring of the civil service so that it is efficient and fit-for-purpose.
This is a critical step towards the reliable and affordable provision of public goods and services to the public.
- Tutani is a political economy analyst. — tutanikevin@gmail.com
