Civil service audit a witch-hunt

By Mukanya Makwira 15/12/2009

“THE true investigative spirit does not start with a system of preconceived ideas.

“It possess absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among people with regards to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their co-ordination,” Romain Rolland, French historian (1886-1944).

The Ministry of Public Service has launched civil service payroll and skills audit at an estimated cost of US$4 million.

The aims of the audit that is supposed to run until December 18, 2009 are “clean the civil service of ghost workers so as to reward the civil service adequately and reasonably”, so we are told.

The minister, Professor Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, has tried to allay genuine fears from some quarters that the audit might be used for nefarious purposes.

“The audit is not in any way a witch hunt. Neither is it meant to apportion blame.

“The money is coming from the Multi Donor Trust Fund and is administered from the World Bank,” he said.

Given brain drain witnessed in the last few years, a skills audit was long overdue, especially in the wake of the recovery efforts.

There are some former Government employees who could still be accessing salaries long after they left their work stations.

However, despite the minister’s reassurances, such a noble and necessary exercise already has worrying political undertones and has been turned into a political charade.

The minister is trying to hide behind a finger with the welfare of the civil servants being the last of his concerns. As they say, the devil is in the detail.

This is the second audit to be carried out by the ministry in as many months.

Could the minister explain to the nation as to what became of the previous audit that was carried out by his ministry in April 2009?

What were the findings that necessitated a second round? Is this not a waste of resources? In the absence of answers to this, those who smell a rat are not without basis then.

An evil spell seems to have engulfed MDC-T members of the inclusive Government.

From the Prime Minister to some Ministers, the expression civil servants and ghosts often appear in the same sentence.

This preoccupation with ghosts is not unfounded. The audit has become a convenient excuse to “de-zanufy” the civil service in as much as they talk of security sector reform.

The Ministry’s choice of Professor John Makumbe, a politician whose selection was deliberate to lead the audit, has cast doubts about the sincerity of the audit.

Is the minister returning a favour to his former colleague at the University of Zimbabwe’s Department of Political Science?

Surprisingly, the very people who supported Makumbe’s candidature are the ones who raised a lot of dust over the appointment of Justice Chiweshe as the head of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission. What hypocrisy?

Political analysts have already dismissed Makumbe’s appointment.

“Such an appointment would be scandalous because Makumbe has already made conclusions before the actual audit. It is important for such a committee to have people whose political views we do not know,” said Professor Jonathan Moyo.

A well-known Zanu-PF critic, Makumbe has previously made comments on the civil service, which makes him a partial auditor who already has a smoking gun in his hand that he wants to transform into a mushroom cloud.

Commenting on Prison deaths on the 4th of April 2009, Makumbe had this to say: “There is poison among our public servants. There is need to clean the civil service from top to bottom. People like Zimondi (the Commissioner of Prisons), Chiwenga (Commander Zimbabwe Defence Forces) and Shiri (Commander of the Air Force of Zimbabwe) should be written off; they are beyond rehabilitation and should be replaced by younger officers.”

For anything constructive to offer to the Zimbabwean nation, Makumbe substitutes his anti-Mugabe obsession and lies for political analysis.

The use of bias as a political platform has long been discredited.

As for lies, substituting for political analysis, the best I can say is that it’s a shame that we still have people who pride themselves in peddling discredited diatribe.

The minister may allay our fears if he were to tell the nation how they came up with little-known CGI audit consultants.

Who are CGI?

Were Government tender procedures followed in the appointment?

Zimbabwe has got many competent audit firms like KPMG, Delloites, Camelsa to name but a few.

Did all these lose out and who did the final selection? So many questions that need answers.

Already, there is evidence that the auditors have not done their homework with regards to the employment procedures in the civil service.

Someone who got into the civil service in 1970 is being asked to bring his appointment letter?

Is that possible or there is some witch hunt going on?

Having been in the teaching field for the past 15 years, I do not remember having been given an appointment letter myself. Am I therefore a ghost worker?

Any audit that is not cognisant of the socio-economic climate that prevailed in the past decade is bound to misrepresent facts.

There has been a lot of misplaced excitement in the MDC-T ranks over the alleged 10 000 ghost workers in the Ministry of Youth, Gender and Employment Creation.

There are some people that wanted to see the Government collapsing due to manpower shortage.

While mistakes of more than one person having different employment codes cannot be condoned, the employment of under-qualified people is not an issue especially in a situation where there was manpower shortage and where remuneration is poor.

In the remote districts of the country, we still have schools being run by temporary teachers who are Ordinary Level graduates.

An insider within MDC-T has told me that the party’s structures have been told to collect curriculum vitaes from the unemployed party youths, for onward forwarding to MDC-T headed ministries.

Is this linked to the audit?

Has Harvest House replaced the role of the Public Service Commission?

If not, is the audit going to interrogate the setting up of parallel government structures by MDC-T?

As the country goes ahead with the recovery efforts, there is need to do away with a preoccupation with cheap, politicking.

Shifting blame will not result in the improvement of the civil service.

The bulk of the money could have been used for the cadetship programme being run by the universities and colleges as the graduates will fill in the vacancies in the civil service as per their contract.