KEETMANSHOOP
Deputy works minister Sankwasa James Sankwasa has called on government officials to work towards effective service delivery for the Namibian people.
Sankwasa urged government employees to ensure that ordinary Namibians are happy with the service rendered at all government offices, saying that service delivery should be done in the most transparent manner, with full accountability from the one rendering the service.
He made these remarks while addressing a huge crowd at Naute Dam during late independence celebrations on Saturday.
He reminded all office-bearers that although Namibia enjoys peace and stability, they should be cognitive of the fact that peace alone without proper service delivery is not good enough.
“We should be mindful that people on the ground do not eat and sleep peace or bath and clothe with peace,” he said, adding “people want and need effective service delivery by all government functionaries.”
He emphasized that accountability can only be assured when there are accountable councillors, administrators and other relevant government personnel.
He said that the public currently perceive the government procurement system to be fraught with corruption and a lack of transparency, which he says is justified.
“Are such perceptions misplaced? The answer is definitely a big no.”
He added that the lack of transparency has fuelled such perceptions of unfairness in the procurement system, as well as in the way promotions are handled in the public service.
He said the staff recruitment and appointment process at national level, and at regional and local authority councils, is taking the shape of ethnic, tribal considerations that often result in appointing incompetent people and as a result service delivery is negatively affected.
He thus urged people to embrace the spirit of one Namibia, one nation, saying it’s an open secret that currently the slogan is cosmetic compared to what is happening on the ground.
Sankwasa also called on Namibians to start pointing fingers at themselves when things go wrong, instead of pointing to the former colonial masters, saying Namibia needs to start accepting and dealing with its current mistakes.
The minister took a short tour of the NDC Naute grape and date project after the official event