Reforms bring notable changes—Chilima

Vice-President Saulos Chilima says the Public Service Reforms exercise, which he leads, has already created notable changes in the public service.
Speaking exclusively this week to Weekend Nation, Chilima said the reforms will be characterised by hard choices and difficult decisions if the public service delivery is to improve.
“We believe it will be appreciated that these reforms are not multiple choice. They just have to be done. Not doing them is not an option,” said Chilima who chairs the eight-member commission President Mutharika appointed recently.
He added: “The effectiveness and efficiency of a country’s public sector is vital to the success of development activities. This is because the public sector is the largest spender and employer and it sets the policy environment for the rest of the economy.”
Setting the tone, Mutharika approved the restructuring of the Office of the President (OPC) by taking some of the activities to their line ministries.
This was aimed at allowing the OPC to revert to its core business.
He also authorised restricting the presence of civil servants at presidential and public functions to only those whose presence was relevant.
“This is working. The willy-nilly visibility of public officers at public functions has been eliminated. In turn, this is contributing to savings,” said Chilima
He said more recommendations have been made, but he declined to discuss them ahead of the President’s approval.
He explained that the recommendations followed analysis of findings from public submissions, hearings and interviews; literature reviews of already existing local and foreign documents on public reforms and a benchmarking study tour that the commission undertook from 9th and 19th September 2014 to Kenya, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
“Commissioners learnt how Kenya has successfully instituted performance contracts from the presidency, cascading down to all levels,” said Chilima.
The other lesson from the East African country is how Malawi could make the Malawi Institute Management and Staff Development responsible for all levels of training in the public service from induction to progression training, including Cabinet ministers like the Kenya School of Government.
The United Kingdom tour, Chilima said, taught the commissioners that transforming public services requires both attitudinal and behavioural changes within government, legislature and in society.
He explained that this calls for the need to incorporate change and diversity in the reform process by adopting new ways of doing things; use of external recruitment to enrich quality of staff; need to inculcate positive mindset in the public servants; need to get the minister and secretary to buy in to reforms at an early stage; and train public servants to improve their performance as well as accountability. n