Madeleine Wackernagel
In trying to bring the public service up to speed, the government has made a Faustian pact that could backfire, says one senior official in the Gauteng administration.
“Only once we ran the statistics did we realise the scale of the problem. We need more money to keep the better people, which means getting rid of more people. If our experience is translated to all nine provinces — and we are more efficient than most — we will need to cut more than 300 000 jobs in total.”
Staff numbers are controlled by budgets now; the Finance and Fiscal Commission allots each province a certain amount for personnel and if the target is not met, there won’t be any extra cash in the government’s coffers to bail out miscreants. One solution might be to contract out to prove their numbers are down, but that could end up being counter-productive — neither saving costs nor improving efficiency.
In addition, concern is growing over where the cuts will take place, and the concomitant effects on service delivery. Many fear health and education will be the first victims, further stretching an already overburdened system.
But says Paddy Maharaj, Gauteng chief director of planning and budgeting, cuts will take place according to national norms and standards. In Gauteng, for example, the average is 30 pupils per high school teacher; the national ratio is 35:one. Thus there is scope for cuts. Health is a different matter, he says, and much more difficult to judge but the provinces are busy conducting workload analyses.
Nevertheless, he remains optimistic that the downsizing and rightsizing will work: “This is a tremendous opportunity to address the issues of bureaucracy and bloatedness in the public service and the way we do things.
“Every position has to be reassessed in terms of what it delivers, within the context of objective criteria. It is a huge challenge but we are hopeful of meeting our targets.”