PREMIER'S ADDRESS
Master of Ceremonies, Professor Thakathi
Honourable Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi
Comrade Joyce Mashamba
Dr Coleman Nyathi
Learned friends and colleagues
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
I feel greatly honoured to have been invited to this conference. A watershed conference indeed. This is the last national conference of public trainers this century. It is also a conference that will usher us into the new millennium.
Ladies and gentlemen, theme of our conference may seem a daunting one. We are gathered here to work out ways of meeting the challenges and demands of transforming the public service.
This is an enormous, yet achievable task. The critical elements of this task is to understand clearly the nature and character of all our priorities.
We need to understand clearly the nature of the public service we have inherited and what transformation this service needs to undergo if it has to survive in the next millennium.
The historic 1994 democratic elections marked a major break from our past. But they also imposed on us enormous challenges of reinventing government. It was always clear that any new government would have a daunting task of transforming the state machinery into an efficient agent for real delivery to all the citizens of our country.
Both the state and civil society had and still have an obligation to adapt to new tasks and new epochs. The state however, with its authority and resources has more responsibility to provide leadership and systems for better governance and consequently a better life for the citizens of this country. T
This clearly called for the public service to create space for public participation on issues of delivery. A change from delivering to a passive citizenry to a more active and critical civil society.
When the President addressed Parliament recently he said: "We are on course! Steadily the dark clouds of despair are lifting, giving way to our season of hope".
The President was indicating the hope our people have in us. In the past five years the ANC and its allies have made substantial progress in transforming the state and developing a culture of democracy and peace.
Bur serious challenges remain.
Problems remain in ensuring open, fair and efficient government and
restructuring departments to meet new needs, especially in provinces
The structures of the bureaucracy remain hostile to public participation and pressure. Policy processes often remain secretive and closed to influence from Alliance partners and the broader public, leading to mistaken and unpopular measures in some cases. People's organizations have only limited routes to participate in governance and consult with political leadership.
Like the country as a whole, government faces a severe shortage of management skills. There are serious deficiencies in the provincial governments deficiencies that will take a long time and many resources to correct. In this context, systematic corruption and nepotism have proven to be serious problems.
Ladies and gentlemen, we say this things so we can be honets in the debates and discussions over the next few days. We appeal to you not to shy away from tackling thorny issues head on.
t is my firm believe that training exists to improve performance. Performance occurs in line departments. Is it not time that we empower line departments since they interact with customers and are positioned to understand customer's needs? Is the word decentralization such a dirty word we make it out to be? I
We need to network because it will assist us to empower us
resulting in efficient service delivery. This government has had the task of
putting in place a public service machinery while ensuring that effective
delivery takes place .This requires a precarious balancing act.
We are proud that while we remain with huge challenges we have made sure that
systems do not collapse. As managers you must be commended for rising to the
occasion. However, we must say that a great deal of work remains undone.
The public service has numerous transformation priorities. The national government has taken the challenge of transforming the civil service in a coherent and strategic manner. We wish to commend the extensive consultation of National government on issues of transforming the civil service.
We wish to state emphatically that the Mpumalanga government will continue to play an active and critical role in this process. It is crucial that we have a deep understanding of the transformation priorities facing the public service of our new political order. These priorities include the following:
Creating an innovative, dynamic and mission-driven machinery
that responds to the needs of our citizens and facilitates delivery. An
affordable public service, a powerful and excellent management systems are
critical components of this process.
Democratising the public service and the way it functions.
Creating a new ethos based on eradicating the socio-economic disparities that
plague our country. Our success as a government will not be determined by the
number of policy documents but rather by the effective and responsive delivery
of services.
Lastly, developing our available human resources. This entails in-service
training, vigorous literacy campaigns within our work force and the introduction
of induction courses.
This conference is a critical forum for real deliberations about the tasks which confront us and the practical steps to meet these challenges head-on. The public service is a vital component of the state and an indispensable instrument of delivery. Radical transformation of society requires a strong, committed civil society and dynamic, innovative organs of the state. This conference symbolizes a commitment to the democratisation of the public service .
In the next few days we will be discussing a number of important matters. We will be discussing ways of designing customer-driven training programmes, We will also be searching for ways to ensure excellence and effective service delivery in the public service.
Peter Senge, in his book The Fifth Disciplines boldly predicts that only organisations that are learning organisations will survive the next millennium. It is heartening to realise that we will, over the next days be discussing ways of cultivating a culture of lifelong learning
Other topics include: How to manage change in an organisation, and realigning training programmes to service delivery.
Ladies and gentlemen, all our efforts will come to nothing unless we deal urgently and purposefully with the HIV/AIDS emergency in and through our training system. This is the priority that underlies all priorities, for unless we succeed, we face a future full of suffering and loss, with untold consequences for our communities and the public service.
These are difficult questions but they must be answered as honestly as possible.
We must display through our work and our debates here that we are a new public service committed to serving all the citizens of this country in the most effective and efficient manner. This will surely go a long way to relegitimize the entire public service. This legitimacy can only be achieved if we serve effectively and efficiently. Our styles of management must display this commitment to both the public and those we manage. This brings me to a very crucial subject on the issue of management and traing.
Our training and work can only be realized if our leadership philosophy as managers creates an environment which is conducive to productivity. The pervasive "boss-boy complex" management only serves to encourage kowtowing and retard dynamism and robust generation of strategic policy ideas within our workforce.
As managers we have a duty to provide new leadership. Leadership which is sensitive to the needs of those who work in their departments. The need for equal treatment and respect follow implicitly from the fact of sensitive management. We come in all shades and colours.
We are probably members of different classes of society. But we are commonly bound by a moral and political obligation to serve our people in the best way we possible can. It is therefore critical that managers create an environment which conduces to a diligent workforce.
The people you work with as a manager of a department are a resource not a threat. Treat them with compassion and understanding. Compassion in a workplace does not necessarily mean you will not be respected as the manager. The people you work with must look forward to their work. The woman or man who cleans your corridors must know that she/he is one of the key pillars of the office.
Your offices must be places where work is approached with less bitterness and more enthusiasm.
The perception of the public service is that it is corrupt, nepotistic, maladministered and not adding value to tax payers money . To be frank, this perception is justified only by the minority of public servants who abuse their positions.
There are some persons who take retirement while at work. I wish to state it unequivocally that these persons are a destructive and cancerous component of our public service. To those who work hard we value your contribution and look forward to empowering you in providing an excellent service to the public.
In conclusion let me call on each one of you here today to go back and rid our public service of mannerism or tendencies that only serve to destroy the capacity and legitimacy of our public service. Service excellence is a corollary of this understanding.
"Our Business is Service". We have a duty and mandate to serve our people . Let us not fail them.
Let me conclude by inviting those who come from outside Mpumalanga to use your time in the province to boost our economy. For health reasons and to minimise stress levels, avoid just making this a working visit. Go to the slot machines. We need the revenue.
I wish you well in your deliberations
I thank you.