‘Bruck’ and Rebuild

Mar 03, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Prime Minister of Jamaica had established, last year, a Public Sector Transformation Oversight Committee after research by two civil society organizations found that inefficiency caused by wastage within the public sector has cost the government more than six billion dollars between 2009 and 2012.
If Guyana should undertake an analysis of wastage within the public service, it is more than likely that the findings would not be dissimilar to what was found in Jamaica.
There is a great deal of wastage inefficiency within the public service. For one, there is likely to be wastage inefficiency caused by the employment of unqualified and inexperienced personnel. There is need for the de-politicization of the recruitment process so as to ensure that only the best persons are employed.
A simple test would be to ask employees to draft a proper letter or prepare a minor report into a matter. This is one way of testing just how functionally literate are some of the persons employed within the public service.
But the greatest area of wastage is not the employment of dunces as it is the overstaffing which takes place within the public service of Guyana. It seems to have been the practice that for every clerical job, a second person must be employed. The logic is that if a substantive holder of a position is sick, then someone should be available to fill his or her position until that person returns to work.
The problem with this approach is that for most of the year the substitute has no work to do and is still on the payroll. In other countries, temporary workers are put on call to sit-in for absentee workers. The workers on call are summoned out from their homes when the substantive worker is absent, on leave or sick. The sit-in worker is only paid for the days that he or she has to substitute for the substantive worker, thereby saving millions.
Another major area of wastage is the provision of office space and facilities. It seems that today every middle level or senior official has to be provided with an office, with air conditioning, support staff and office supplies. The overheads for ministries and government agencies are prohibitively high.
In developed countries, a way has been found to reduce these overheads while allowing workers more time with their families. Some categories of workers are allowed to work from home. With the improvements in communication through cell phone and the internet, it has become much easier for many categories of workers to work from home, thereby saving their employers the need to provide office space, office furniture, electricity, air-conditioning, secretarial staff, etc.
Stationery is a major source of wastage within the public sector. It seems like these days the office is required to supply even the pens and pencils which workers use. In the old days, workers had to find their own pens. These days you would believe that workers are going back to school. They are demanding not just pens, but pencils, erasers, pencil sharpeners and rulers. It may soon end up where they may demand compasses and protractors.
But the biggest area of wastage is the capital works which are undertaken by ministries and agencies. There is a habit when new governments come to power. They tend to want to make things look different from their predecessors, and so they engage is what is commonly known as ‘bruck’ and build back.
A structure which would have cost millions to construct is dismantled and is then rebuilt. Offices are renovated and redesigned. All of this is absolute waste of resources.
When a structure is first built it should last for a lifetime, allowing for minimal maintenance. But what we find with many government ministries is that millions are spent to build a structure and when a new government comes in, it wants to break it down and rebuild something new without any change in its functionality.
It is also a way of giving jobs to contractors. But it is a waste of precious resources which can be used to improve the salaries of workers.
Governments need to undertake feasibility studies to determine whether the breaking down or renovation work will increase functionality. It makes no sense for something to be broken down when the added benefit cannot be justified by the expenditure required. But do not tell that to the big wigs who just love to ‘bruck’ and rebuild.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News