Public service must be above suspicion

By Editor

Editorial Cartoon

The festive season is fast approaching, and people across the globe are looking forward to celebrating Christmas and the New Year.

This is also the time Tanzanians have just marked 53 years of Tanganyika’s independence, when the last governor of what is now mainland Tanzania handed over the reins of power to Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere.

With that, the former school teacher became the first Prime Minister and – exactly a year later, on December 9, 1962 – President of Tanganyika.

This effectively severed the master-servant colonial links between the UK and Tanzania, except that both countries remained members of the British Commonwealth.
In one of the speeches he delivered upon assuming the Presidency, Mwalimu Nyerere said the country had three enemies which it had to fight tooth and nail in order to speed up the pace of the social, economic, political and general development of the then newly independent country. He gave the “evil trio” as poverty, ignorance and disease.

Sadly, a fourth and arguably more destructive one has since emerged in the form of grand corruption eating deep into the very fabric of our nation.

This point was repeatedly cited by most people interviewed by this paper as the nation celebrated the 53rd anniversary years of Tanganyika’s independence on Tuesday.

Many said they had impeccable evidence that some public servants do not fulfil their duties as required by their codes of conduct, adding that failure discharge the responsibilities diligently, accountably and honestly enough would sabotage the economy, endanger national security and wreak havoc on the unity and peace Tanzanians in their tens of millions so greatly prize and cherish.

They could not be more right. For, it is true that many public offices are no longer being run as responsibly and efficiently as they should. Defaulting on working hours has become increasingly common, not to mention a noticeable drop in discipline – and this is to cite but only one area where there is a mess.
In all fairness, though, it’s not every public office or every public servant that is wide of the mark in terms of devotion to work, efficiency or discipline. Evidently, there are good performers, and these ought to be recognised and rewarded accordingly.

On numerous occasions, some officials waste hours on irrelevancies such as small talk about the previous night’s results from premier soccer leagues in Spain, England or Italy instead of serving members of the public seeking emergency assistance.

There may be a legion of examples of this laissez-faire attitude towards service to the public – and most would buttress the point that public officials must discharge the obligations to satisfaction or risk disciplinary and other deterrent measures.

Things are bad indeed. We wonder what has gone wrong with discipline, honesty and uprightness in the public service, once trade mark attributes in the early years of our country’s independence.

Going forward, we need to so spruce up our public service that it becomes impossible for it to breed – or be infiltrated by – strange elements such as we find behind the string of scandals we now keep witnessing in the public service.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN