PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTATION ARE BIRDS OF DIFFERENT FEATHERS

Jan 05, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Every party in Guyana has a plan. It is called making promises. But no sooner is the ink dry on the results of the elections, the victors discover how difficult it is to implement plans without the talent to do so.
Guyana’s problem is not the lack of plans; it is the lack of implementation skills. This deficiency can be sourced to a lack of talent. In other words, we have the wrong people in the right jobs.
The voting masses are easily deceived. They look to those with standing in society – those who have made a name for themselves in various fields in private life – and they assume that these persons can easily transfer their skill sets into public administration. Unfortunately, the reality is different. Many an expert in one field has ended up being a palpable failure in public administration.
There is also another uncomfortable truth. Many who have worked only in public administration for ages are not necessarily good at what they do. They know the systems, but this does not necessarily make them good administrators.
Government has become a business. Governments should be run like businesses – to make money and to delivery services efficiently. Public administrators need business skills. They need to run government ministries and departments like they would run their own businesses – without wastage and with efficiency of effort.
Unfortunately, many of those who are placed as ministers and permanent secretaries and senior bureaucrats rarely possess administrative skills. We have some persons running government departments and ministries who have never run a cake shop.
Some of them have not built anything apart from their own homes. And yet they are being handed responsibility for making decisions and implementing programmes which will affect the lives of thousands of citizens. Not because someone puts on a suit or drives around in a fancy car or has some high certificate makes that person suited for being responsible for the lives of thousands of citizens.
There is a simple test of suitability which is still applied in many places outside of Guyana. Applicants for jobs are not asked so much about their qualifications as they are about what they have achieved. When someone is being considered for a top job within the government, the main criterion should be about what they bring to the job. They should be asked what they have achieved – don’t show me your certificates; show me your track-record and what you have achieved.
This should be the primary consideration in determining the suitability of persons for jobs. There are many persons out there who have a lot of certificates, but cannot write a proper report. They can speak well, but write poorly. Others cannot speak well at all, but they get the job done. If you want a report writer do not ask someone to speak. Put them to sit down and ask them to write a report.
Years ago when someone came for a job in a typing pool; they were given a test. They were put to type a document. They could come with a whole heap of qualifications and good references, but unless they could type at a minimum of 100 words a minute, they had little chance of getting a job.
The party card changed all of that. People began to be placed in positions not on the basis of their ability or achievements but on grounds of affiliation – political affiliation. And this is what has destroyed and continues to destroy public administration.
So when the politicians come to you with their nice-sounding plans, ask them one question. Ask them where they will find the talent to implement those plans.
There are a lot of pen-pushers within the government who simply do not have the ability needed for the job. And yet people are surprised at the state of the country.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)