Monday, November 4, 2024

A Reflection on Challenges facing Public Services in the Region

There are a number of very critical challenges that our public services, in the Southern African region, have to face and deal with for the betterment of living standards of the citizens in the sub-region.

These are obviously many and affect regional countries to varying and different degrees.
However I wish to reflect on a few of them that have for the past few years continued to be problematic to our public services. I will discuss these in no order of importance and this discussion shall also not imply that those not dealt with in this piece are of lesser importance or concern to the region’s governments. Let me begin with the issue of reduction in government expenditures for the coming years.

Our National Development Plan 10 has as its major focus to reduce government expenditure over the plan period. I want to believe that even amongst other SADC countries there are attempts to reduce government expenditure out of compulsion of the effects of the recent Global Economic recession. Any measures intended to mitigate and re-invigorate economic vitality has had to include budget cuts and the suspension and/or total abandonment of some programmes and projects, largely those associted with social welfare and heavy government subsidies. This is a big challenge for our governments because thus far within the region, there has always been a good chunk of government programmes and projects that are of a social welfare nature many of which are clearly products of populist approaches. Public services will have to rationalise this shift of budget cuts and begin to institutionalise it within their policy initiation and programme development.

The greatest challenge will ofcourse be reconciling these new measures with what may appear to be political expediency, which continues to play a critical role in the choice of projects and their location. A complicating matter on this is the continued escalating costs of providing public services in general, particularly basic services such as education, health and water provision. There is also a choice to either scale down or totally cancel maintenance of some very major infrastructural services such as roads, transport and communication networks. This is a challenge in that scaling down or suspension of maintaining these facilities are effectively not good choices for public servants to make, because in the long run countries’ transport and communications networks will be very ineffective and costly for the regional economy.

The second, challenge is the concern with diversifying the economy, especially for countries such as Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. A key component of the diversification focus is to have embedded in these efforts, programmes and projects that directly assist these governments to address problems such as unemployment and poverty issues. This particular focus creates a dilemma for public services because, whilst they have to be infusing a culture of low government spending, programmes addressing poverty issues and unemployment are not necessarily amenable to issues of cost recovery and economic efficiency. These demands of public services to continue including social welfare programmes, as part of their planning and development initiatives, even if, as it’s often the case, it makes it difficult to justify these projects within the larger economic reality of reduction of government expenditure. Public services are often faced with the difficulty of remaining politically correct in their planning and justification of economic objectives and plan focus.

The greatest challenge associated with the above is the need for public services to always attempt to balance any measures towards cost recovery with general equity issues, the latter being purely a value and normative based approach to policy and programme development. The level of economic development in our region and in particular within the countries of Botswana, Lesetho, Swaziland and others, is such that it would be inconceivable to neglect social welfare programmes in pursuit of economic efficiency and private sector led development. The still to mature private sectors means governments have to continue to be the major players in the overal development processes and a large portion of citizens’ needs and priorities are in areas that require governments to heavily subsidize the cost of providing some of these basic services.

Public services will therefore have to contend with these realities, even as they seek to find ways to reduce government expenditure in the long run. It is a challenge that demands careful balancing of social, economic and political considerations at both policy and programme development levels. I am assuming here that we are agreed that finding compatability amongst and within social, economic and political realities can be one of the most daunting challenges public servants have had to deal with.

Other challenges includes the continuing cost of dealing with the HIV/AIDS pandemic through measures required for reducing its spread and dealing with its consequences. These are obviously very costly measures that cannot be reduced for purposes of adhering to cost recovery measures.The region has also had to deal with outbreaks of other contagious human and animal diseases such as Swine Flu and foot and mouth, among others. Containment of the spread of these and other diseases is a major challenge for public service institutions. There are also the regional efforts to contain what has appeared to be escalating corruption practices within and amongst the regional countries.

These problems have seen the establishment of Anti- Corruption agencies in most regional countries, but more importantly it has also required the capacitation of other existing law enforcement agencies so that they can meet this challenge. These efforts are in themselves very costly not only to initiate but to keep them operating at high efficiency and effective levels. That cross border crimes are on the rise means that governments must continue to allocate sufficient funds for their continued effectiveness.

Lastly, the greatest challenge that is generic in effect and necessity is the actualization or enhancement of good governance and democratic practices in the region. Often we tend to assume that these are inherently political problems and challenges, but I will contend that public services are equally liable for the good and bad of our governance and democratic practices. As implementing agencies public institutions give meaning to our accountability and transparency processes and this is an integral part of the vibrancy of any regional country’s public administration practices. In short it is the central point of our democracy, development, unity and progression.

Dan Molaodi teaches Public Administration at the University of Botswana.

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