State Employees Must Not Do Business With The State

THE practice whereby civil servants are allowed to apply to the Public Service Commission for permission to conduct business while employed by the state must be stopped forthwith and discouraged. This practice is clearly is promoting corruption in the country.

The Office of the Prime Minister is called upon to consider a proposal that all civil servants be banned from conducting business with the state and the existing approvals are withdrawn. It is time public servants and semi governmental employees choose between serving the state and being in private business.
If this concession is withdrawn, we might succeed in making sure that we are creating a cadre of the public service who is concerned with and only concentrating on the job, and not doing the job but at the same time benefiting from the state in itself already a conflict of interest and contributing to the non delivery of services.
The Office of the Prime Minister must work on amending the Public Service Act to make this a law and all the others governing local government, municipalities and parastatals should be amended and brought in line with this proposal.
Those found guilty of fraud, corruption or financial mismanagement are to be blacklisted and barred from working for any government department, parastatals or local authorities.There must be emphatic attempts at getting rid of the misuse of public funds by government employees.
The Office of the Prime Minister must set up an office of standards compliance in the Public Service Commission that would be headed by a “chief/director-general”. The general’s role would be to ensure that directors and heads of department deliver on their duties.
That will be beneficial in reducing the high unemployment rate which is reported at 51 percent and, furthermore, limit corruption and all dubious tender practices and waste of government resources.
Linus Neumbo
By email

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