Changing the way we do things

WHEN the leaders of Zimbabwe’s three political parties put their signatures to the Global Political Agreement (GPA) on September 15 last year, that was a statement of the intention for change.

The real work begins now with the new cabinet taking charge effectively this week. The most critical task for the government of national unity is to change the culture of work in government. The most difficult part of managing change is “culture” simply defined as, “the way we do things here”. The arrest of Roy Bennett on charges that are changing each time is an example of how desperately Zimbabwe needs to address “the way we do things here”. If Bennett had a warrant issued way back in 2006, the police have had time to consider the charges they want to prefer against Bennett, rather than hold him while they look for charges to prefer.

The challenge when changing culture of work is that you do not simply do it through announcements in the media, government circulars or e-mails. There is always stronger resistance to change especially in the bureaucracy that government is. The wheels of government are slow to turn because governments are big organisation, that is why it is important to break ministries into smaller departments and put tight deadlines on short term projects so that they can deliver or change faster.

Much more has to be done in terms of public sector reforms that will address culture of service and this is what the Zimbabweans are awaiting from our newly-appointed ministers. It will take their creativity, initiatives, and ingenuity.When the Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai announced that the civil servants would be getting their salaries in foreign currency by the end of this month, he might have risked creating a crisis of expectation. However, the doubt expressed by the Progressive Teachers' Union leader Raymond Majongwe over the Prime Minister's promise was clear sign that the union leaders understood that need to be realistic. The devil was to be in the details.

We now know civil servants will be paid $100 tax free. It is not clear whether the civil servants were expecting to be paid a full salary for February since most of them have not been at work for some time now. It is also not clear whether those civil servants who have not been doing any work or who turned up just to register presence at their stations expect to be paid a full month’s salary in forex. This would be accepting “the way we do things”.

My view is that the package promised by the Prime Minister was to be more of a stimulus package for everyone to have a starting point to return to work and the country to start afresh. Civil servants should be paid for the work done and we all know that they have not been at work for good reasons but there are others who have been working and continue to work hard. There should be also evidence of the work done but that was always going to be hard to prove so a stimulus package is the fair way to go.

UNICEF has reported that “the education crisis which started last year saw a marked depletion of teachers in schools, plummeting school attendance rate from over 80 per cent to 20 per cent…” We know that all major hospitals are closed or have been closed for sometime now, do the workers in these institutions expect to be paid full salaries for the work that they have not done? The answer to these questions sets a precedent for the way we do things from now going forward.

It has to be clear in “the way we do things” that “no work, no pay”. Majongwe of the Progressive Teacher’s Union is within his right to fight for the teachers’ rights to have meaningful salaries and tell them no to go to work until their demands are met. However, the government should also be clear about their policy on paying civil servants including those who are not at work. It makes sense that when a worker is on strike, they understand that they are not at work.

Most civil servants in strong economies like the UK do not even earn as much as Zimbabwe’s teachers are demanding. Teachers will need to know that such demands caused a major crush of the Zimbabwe dollar in December 1997 when the war veterans demanded cash from government. We just need to change the we do things in Zimbabwe, the siege mentality will not get us anyway.

It is hoped that civil servants will be realistic in their expectations and that they will understand that forex is not going to be just a substitute for the Zimbabwe dollar but value for the work they do.