President Koroma Challenges Public Servants By State House Communications Unit In keeping with his pledge to run Sierra Leone as a business concern, His Excellency President Dr Ernest Bai Koroma on 31st July signed performance contracts with the heads of thirty-eight public sector institutions, including agencies and tertiary institutions at the Credentials Hall, State House, Freetown. Giving a brief background to performance contracting in Sierra Leone, President Koroma said performance contracts were introduced to ministers of government and later cascaded to permanent secretaries, local councils and other institutions to improve on service delivery in the country. He noted that the process had been designed in line with international best practice to ensure efficiency. “The focus is that as a government, you can only be efficient as your public sector. And for the public sector to be efficient, we have to manage our time well, our resources and have value for money”, he declared, warning that, “The public out there expect quality service provision at all times”. The president further admonished the 38 CEOs to be competitive in the services they provide to the citizens who are the real customers. He vowed to continue to ensure that those who man the institutions that provide services for the public are efficient. “This is why we have introduced this system. A system that ensures we run our institutions like business concerns and meet our targets at the appropriate time; be competitive in the service that we provide and satisfy our customer who is the Sierra Leonean”, President Koroma emphasized. He reiterated government’s determination to continuously improve on its monitoring and evaluation systems to ensure everybody performs. “I hope that what you have signed today will be made public not only to members of your board, but also members of staff. If they don’t meet their targets as staff members, collectively the institution will not be able to meet its target.” “So I want to urge all of you to ensure that next year when we come to evaluate, you will not be the worst performer because you might not know where you will end up by being the worst performer”, he insisted, and called on the moral guarantors (the Ministries of Finance and Economic Development and Education, Science and Technology, and the Tertiary Education Commission) to address the challenges faced by the different institutions in a timely and holistic manner. In his presentation on the assessment outcomes of the 2012 Contracts signed with tertiary institutions and state-owned agencies, and commissions, State House Chief of Staff, Dr Richard Konteh paid glowing tribute to the best performing tertiary institution, best agency and best commission with a certificate presented by no less a person than the Fountain of Honour himself. The top performing tertiary institutions were Njala University College - Gold, Port Loko Teachers College – Silver and the Eastern Polytechnic – Bronze. The bottom performers were the University of Sierra Leone and the Northern Polytechnic. Similarly, the top performing commissions were NacSa – Gold, Sierra Leone Insurance Commission – Silver and National Youth Commission – Bronze respectively. The bottom performers in this category were the Civil Service Commission and the National Assets Commission. The Environmental Protection Agency took gold as top performer in this category (Agencies), followed by the NRA with silver and SLRTA with bronze. It is worthy to note that these agencies are all headed by women. The bottom performers were the Sierra Leone Ports Authority, the National Power Authority and SALPOST. Dr Richard Konteh explained that although there were many indicators used to assess the performance of institutions, key among them was; scores made on the targets or outputs as agreed in the performance contract. He observed that all the institutions reviewed complained about the snail pace of disbursements from the MoFED during the quarters of the year; challenging internal processes; policy and legal challenges; and weak HR capacity as factors that inhibit performance. The Chairman of the signing ceremony, Emmanuel B. Osho-Coker, Secretary to the President said in his opening remarks, that performance contracting represents the tool for performance management which helps to not just improve performance in terms of setting clearer strategic objectives and priorities but also increasing transparency and accountability. “Governance can be improved when what we do as public servants can be measured, managed and improved for the real customer; the citizens of this country”, he said. Mr. Osho-Coker also noted that the idea of the president is to make the public service more efficient, effective and competitive, while ensuring that change, service delivery and performance happen by design and not by chance. Mr. Abdul-Rahman Sowa, Director of Performance Management and Service Delivery (PMSD) at State House took the 38 heads of the various institutions through the signing process. The vote of thanks was delivered by Prof. Abu Sesay, Vice Chancellor and Principal of Njala University.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 09:23:03 +0000
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