By Kabelo Mollo
In her budget speech last Monday, the minister of finance spoke about our bloated wage bill. Our civil service is probably three times bigger than it needs to be. It’s amazing that at that size it’s still so inefficient. It still requires so much bribery and graft in order to get things done. There are obviously pockets of excellence but unfortunately they are few and far between.
Last week my wife had an incident that left a sour taste in the mouth but was also the perfect metaphor for a number of civil servants in our country. My wife arrived at a mall where the City council has its offices. Unbeknownst to her she parked in the PRO of the organisations parking spot. No security was present to direct her not to park there, nor was there a reserved sign. Upon return she was told that the PRO in question had purposely parked her in and wouldn’t be relenting until the end of the day. Stunned, my wife tried to sort the situation out reasonably but was told in no uncertain terms, this time by the lady herself that she would not be moving. Her gripe was with the security officials and while my wife was merely a casualty of war she was going to do nothing to remedy the situation. Instead she continued belligerent as ever, to make the point that the security should a learn a lesson from that. Quite how inconveniencing an unknowing member of the public was doing that, I will never know. As my wife related the story I grew more and more disconsolate as it struck me that, that was the calibre of people we’re expecting to deliver services to the nation.
I tell this story not to settle a score nor even to deride the civil servant in question, but rather as an illustration of the magnitude of the problems our country and new government faces. As I wrote this piece a wishy washy statement from WASCO appeared informing the general public there will be a water disturbance. No detail on how long said disturbance nor why it’d be. Leaving room for rumours to take root. The loudest one being that the state sewerage and water company is in debt to the state electricity company to the tune of M40 million and the electricity company had decided the it way to remedy the situation was to disconnect it. These two entities have one regulatory authority and yet this issue played out like something that would’ve happened on a school playground.
Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse it emerged that a bunch of home affairs officials had not been remunerated for the month of February. In what can only be described as a shocking outburst the minister responsible said these were not the first people to go unpaid. Implying they should shut their mouths and carry on with their lives. How did we get here? How on earth do we find ourselves at this point I wonder to myself. I spoke last week about a crisis being arrested, but barely a week on I have to wonder. Has it been?
This unfortunate series of mishaps (for want of a better word) leave even the greatest of optimists like myself feeling down and defeated. My sunny disposition is decidedly cloudier than it has ever been and my belief in our collective power has waned to negligible. I am a small sample size but the concern is how many more like me are There? How many others are receiving the worst most childlike service from government agencies? How many others took the water crisis like a hammer blow? And how many have grown beyond despondent with the every day occurrences in the country? On Twitter somebody opined “ke Lesotho mona” is their least favourite expression as it never ever denotes something exceptionally good that has happened. It’s always about something ridiculously bad.
I’m going to use this platform to implore those tasked with delivering services and those who sought to be elected in to seats of power to PLEASE do infinitely better. So that when somebody says “ke Lesotho mona” they might actually be talking about the sensational Michelle Tau conquering yet another taekwondo contest. Or Miss Lesotho, a worthy ambassador winning the miss world pageant. It starts with you…
