“So cunning it’s just been appointed professor of cunning at Oxford University…”
This Week’s Ramble has a cunning plan.
* * *
Actually, I don’t, but our division does. At least, we hope so: we’re taking two days this week to plot out what we need to do over the next year and beyond to achieve the targets we’ve set during our recent frenzy of strategizing, negotiation and brinkmanship with donors.
It’s something we’ve needed to do for a while, so we’re looking forward to it. Making plans and sticking to plans is one of the things Government has found most difficult in recent times, so just having this meeting is a good first step. We’re going to try and clarify the role of each officer, what needs to be achieved on a corporate level, and by extension, on the individual level.
Seasoned Ramble-readers will know what comes next: the catch. I’ve previously written of my respect for those capable and committed senior Government officials who work for substantially less than they would be earning in the private or NGO sector. What I’ve rarely touched upon is my sympathy for my more junior colleagues, who often earn far, far less than they can reasonably live on, and get asked to perform rather labour intensive and difficult tasks, to boot. It’s not uncommon to field a phone call from one of our more junior officers, telling us that they can’t come to work for want of the K 50 (approximately 30 pence for my British readers) that it costs to take a minibus into town. On salaries like that, what are the incentives for the long hours of boring data-entry that power Government analysis and therefore policy making?
In such circumstances, planning is tempting fate; how to make the Gods laugh. Basic things like asking for questionnaires to be filled in become problematic for the simple reason that when they’re done, they may be left on desks rather than entered into the relevant database or filed in the relevant folder. Every workplace in the world has people who are working at less than full capacity, but where the conditions of employment are so poor as to essentially inform an entire grade of staff that their work is not important, you’ll find organisational paralysis.
There are no easy solutions to this. Increasing salaries across the board is simply not an option for a country as resource-constrained as Malawi, so you’re left trying to play a zero sum game. Someone recently suggested to me that the key to an efficient civil service was to sack half the staff and then double the salaries of the rest. That would make an enormous difference to the motivation levels of each member of staff, making their jobs that much more valuable, but it’s easy to see the downsides of it, too. You’d be sweeping away the livelihoods of many families, and the attendant labour unrest hardly bears thinking about.
No one is going to grasp the nettle of this particular problem any time soon, and until someone does, the only partial solution is for those officials who have the time, motivation and inclination to work their socks off, to do so, and hope that conditions improve in time.
So, planning will set our direction, but getting to the destination won’t be all that much easier.
* * *
This week’s Ramble is a bit late, partly because a few of my best friends here have had the temerity to leave Malawi. Leaving do’s, farewells and the like have taken up many of my evenings recently. Moving to a new country for a finite period of time does that: most of your friends will either have left before you or will be left behind when you leave.
* * *
Actually, I don’t, but our division does. At least, we hope so: we’re taking two days this week to plot out what we need to do over the next year and beyond to achieve the targets we’ve set during our recent frenzy of strategizing, negotiation and brinkmanship with donors.
It’s something we’ve needed to do for a while, so we’re looking forward to it. Making plans and sticking to plans is one of the things Government has found most difficult in recent times, so just having this meeting is a good first step. We’re going to try and clarify the role of each officer, what needs to be achieved on a corporate level, and by extension, on the individual level.
Seasoned Ramble-readers will know what comes next: the catch. I’ve previously written of my respect for those capable and committed senior Government officials who work for substantially less than they would be earning in the private or NGO sector. What I’ve rarely touched upon is my sympathy for my more junior colleagues, who often earn far, far less than they can reasonably live on, and get asked to perform rather labour intensive and difficult tasks, to boot. It’s not uncommon to field a phone call from one of our more junior officers, telling us that they can’t come to work for want of the K 50 (approximately 30 pence for my British readers) that it costs to take a minibus into town. On salaries like that, what are the incentives for the long hours of boring data-entry that power Government analysis and therefore policy making?
In such circumstances, planning is tempting fate; how to make the Gods laugh. Basic things like asking for questionnaires to be filled in become problematic for the simple reason that when they’re done, they may be left on desks rather than entered into the relevant database or filed in the relevant folder. Every workplace in the world has people who are working at less than full capacity, but where the conditions of employment are so poor as to essentially inform an entire grade of staff that their work is not important, you’ll find organisational paralysis.
There are no easy solutions to this. Increasing salaries across the board is simply not an option for a country as resource-constrained as Malawi, so you’re left trying to play a zero sum game. Someone recently suggested to me that the key to an efficient civil service was to sack half the staff and then double the salaries of the rest. That would make an enormous difference to the motivation levels of each member of staff, making their jobs that much more valuable, but it’s easy to see the downsides of it, too. You’d be sweeping away the livelihoods of many families, and the attendant labour unrest hardly bears thinking about.
No one is going to grasp the nettle of this particular problem any time soon, and until someone does, the only partial solution is for those officials who have the time, motivation and inclination to work their socks off, to do so, and hope that conditions improve in time.
So, planning will set our direction, but getting to the destination won’t be all that much easier.
* * *
This week’s Ramble is a bit late, partly because a few of my best friends here have had the temerity to leave Malawi. Leaving do’s, farewells and the like have taken up many of my evenings recently. Moving to a new country for a finite period of time does that: most of your friends will either have left before you or will be left behind when you leave.
posted by the Maradona of Malawi at 10:25 PM
