With the current general poor attitude displayed by some civil servants, introducing a four-day work week in Namibia would be catastrophic, Cabinet secretary George Simataa has said.
Simataa, a public servant for over 40 years, said this during a sit-down with New Era last week where a barrage of contemporary issues about public service, his professional and personal life were unpacked.
His comments come at a time when some local institutions are set to embark on testing the four-day work week waters, in trials that will determine its viability.
The pilot programme is locally spearheaded by Pulse HR Network Namibia. It is expected to be implemented by selected businesses. It is scheduled for six months starting next month.
From where Simataa stands, introducing a four-day work week will bring the economy to its knees.
Simataa is aware that Kenya is among the few African nations exploring the four-day work week phenomenon.
“That’s a very difficult situation. If you have a bad culture like we have in Namibia.
I’m the head of the public service in terms of the law and in terms of image. I know the culture that exists within the public service. People come to work as they wish. It has not been easy to control people,” Simataa said.
According to the secretary, there is a general sense of entitlement among civil servants.
The entitlement, he said, is not performance-based, but rather on whether a public holiday is on the horizon.
“People now demand. When it’s Christmas? they ask, can we have a half day and knock off at 10h00? That should not be the issue. The employer should say, ‘this year you worked very hard. Therefore, you deserve to have a half day to go for your Christmas’, but not to demand it,” stated Simataa.
The same attitude, he said, reared its head during the burial week of the late president Hage Geingob. Some civil servants, he recalled, were demanding that Friday, 23 February, be made a public holiday. “That attitude of entitlement, of not wanting to work, If you have the presence of that culture or attitude in your workers, I don’t think the issue of four days and three days will be attainable. So, I would say at this stage in Namibia, it is not an easy thing to advocate for,” he maintained.
He continued: “Otherwise, the economy will die because we have not come to that stage. Look at what happened when we had Covid-19, we had said to people that you are free to work from home, [but] even cleaners, they said, ‘I’m working from home’. How do you work from home when you are a cleaner?”
The government also faced challenges during the Covid-19 period, as some employees simply went on holiday when they were expected to work remotely.
“And even those that were working from home, there have been many cases that came to my table, where the supervisor is almost fighting the subordinate about ‘where is the proof to show that you did some work’? There’s no way that this person did [the work] except for a few phone calls, which is, in my view, an expenditure because you are spending government money to make useless phone calls.
“We are not ready in Namibia because of the attitude we displayed,” he said.
Diametrically opposed to this view was seasoned unionist and former teacher, Trade Union Congress of Namibia (Tucna)’s Mahongora Kavihuha, who said work patterns have been changing since time immemorial.
“It is not a strange phenomenon. People used to work for 20 hours in a day until trade unions intervened and it was changed to eight hours. It meant, a worker can now spend eight hours at work, eight hours with his family and eight hours of sleep,” Kavihuha said.
For him, it is high time for Namibia to consider the four-day work week in the context of employee time sovereignty, suggesting that some employees in fact work for 24 hours.
“Covid-19 has taught us that we don’t need to be in offices to be productive. In fact, you can perform wherever you are while sharing the time with other responsibilities of your existence. Of course, offices create good employee relations, but do not translate into productivity,” Kavihuha continued.
He added that societal challenges such as abuse of substance, collapse of families and insufficient maternity leave periods are exacerbated by prolonged working hours or days.
“We need to go back to the basics and develop a system where a worker can spend more time with the family,” he said.
He, however, hastened to warn employers.
“So, in principle, we support it. But we are also very cautious that some employers will try to come up with funny things to say, ‘you’re working for four days, so your salary will be reduced’. We are not going to do that. The basic employment conditions cannot be touched, which includes the salaries. The most important thing to look at is productivity,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment-Creation says it is open to innovative approaches to enhance work-life balance and productivity within the workforce. Cognizant that they do not operate in isolation, the ministry indicated that it cannot endorse nor dismiss the four-day work week pilot programme without the views of other stakeholders.
Meanwhile, the Namibian Employers Federation (NEF) claims it has not been formally consulted on the matter.
“The notion of a four-day work week in Namibia seems a bit far-fetched,” responded Helene Ochs, acting secretary general of the NEF.
Salary collectors
With over 100 000 employees and a staggering N$35.4 billion wage bill, the government is the single largest employer in Namibia.
However, in the public domain, some have referred to the wage bill – which the government has struggled curtailing – as wasteful expenditure.
Asked if the spending was justified, Simataa said “yes”, and went to explain why he thinks civil servants and the services they render daily help keep the country afloat.
“The public service and the public servants are very important people. I’ve heard that thing of saying public servants are useless. I disagree. When we had Covid-19, where was the private sector? These public servants are really the people who made sure people don’t die from Covid-19. It’s a well-known fact and internationally, that’s the point that we have seen in which we build quick hospitals.
“We went into partnership with the private sector, we secured medicine, we had meetings to plan for Covid-19 to avoid our people from dying, not anyone else. I’m just giving as an example, the droughts come in this country every year. Who takes care of the public or the citizens of this country? It is the public servants. I’m pointing out the importance of the public servants.”