Cabinet Secretary Frans Kapofi said he was concerned that often permanent secretaries were unaware of submissions being made by their Ministers to Cabinet and unable to provide feedback when asked to so.

In Kapofi's view, "tension" existed between some Ministers and their permanent secretaries to the extent that permanent secretaries were sometimes regarded as not trustworthy.

"Sometimes permanent secretaries will make proposals but they are treated suspiciously and accused of having vested interests in what they are proposing," he told Pohamba.

Pohamba yesterday met with permanent secretaries and their deputies in Windhoek to hear what problems they were experiencing in effective public service delivery.

He said he was "disturbed" by Kapofi's revelations.

"If this is the case, then it is not a healthy situation," said Pohamba.

"There must be a trust between the minister, deputy minister and the permanent secretary.

A ministry can not run smoothly if a minister or a permanent secretary are not co-ordinating efforts of the ministry," said Pohamba.

Given the concerns raised at the meeting, Pohamba said he planned to bring ministers and their permanent secretaries together to discuss the relationship between politics and administration in running Government departments.

Pohamba also took note of concerns raised by Deputy Secretary to Cabinet, Steve Katjiuanjo, who said it was difficult to run the public sector as envisioned, because it was so large.

Katjiuanjo maintained that too much of the country's already strained resources were being sucked up by personnel rather than development.

'TOO BLOATED' Pohamba acknowledged that with more than 70 000 employees the public service was too bloated, but attributed this to the circumstances that prevailed at Independence.

He said the new Government at the time was forced to bring in new staff, but could not get rid of those already employed.

Fifty-six per cent of the country's expenditure goes on paying civil servants.

But Pohamba threw the ball back into the court of the permanent secretaries by saying they should be able to assess whether vacancies were worth filling, or if other staff could be better utilised in the vacant posts than the ones they currently occupied.

"You must check whether there is really a need [to fill vacant posts].

If there is a need, promote somebody who is occupying a useless position and do away with the useless position," said Pohamba.

"The situation is not healthy.

It is too big."

Finance Permanent Secretary Calle Schlettwein said self-assessment should not necessarily be viewed as negative criticism and that it was true that Government was lacking in implementing good policy frameworks.

Schlettwein referred to "weak links in the system" as part of the reason for Government's implementation shortcomings.

Being in charge of Government's purse strings, he cautioned that often Government's policies were beyond what was sustainable and affordable.

"If we commit more resources than are available, we are setting ourselves up for failure," said Schlettwein.

"We must have enough funds available to do what we said we are going to do."

Schlettwein said Government was setting itself up for further failure if it continued to bail out inefficient institutions by diverting precious resources to them.

Two weeks ago, Schlettwein expressed his dissatisfaction to this newspaper at Government having to guarantee a N$86 million loan for Air Namibia, depriving other national priorities of funding.

Schlettwein attributed much of the unauthorised over-expenditure Ministries are accused of year after year to poor budgetary control.

In response to President Pohamba's directive that permanent secretaries exercise tighter control over civil servants who do not perform, Gender Equality and Child Welfare Permanent Secretary Sirkka Ausiku said the State's "cumbersome" disciplinary procedures made it difficult to punish workers who weren't pulling their weight.

Pohamba said these could be changed if it was found to be a broad problem.

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