GOVERNMENT will soon introduce performance contracts for ministers which will be evaluated every three months as a way of improving service delivery in the public service.
Acting Secretary to the Cabinet Evans Chibiliti said the initiative will be taken as a way of improving performance among public service workers in line with the Patriotic Front (PF) manifesto.
“We will design performance contracts which the President will discuss with his ministers. Each year, ministers will do specific things and the President will evaluate them quarterly,” Mr Chibiliti said.
He said this in Livingstone yesterday when he officially opened an induction workshop for permanent secretaries at Protea Hotel.
Mr Chibiliti said he has already discussed the matter with President Sata and that he is confident his office will deliver on the performance contracts.
He said ministers will also use performance contracts to gauge the performance of their permanent secretaries who will do likewise on their directors.
Directors in various ministries will also evaluate the performance of senior government officers using performance contracts.
Mr Chibiliti said the contracts are ideal because the President has a social contract (the PF manifesto) with Zambians on which he has to deliver and that he is confident the system will yield results.
“If we all deliver, there is no reason why ministers should not perform. There should also be no reason why the President will not perform,” he said.
Mr Chibiliti said permanent secretaries should align their strategic plans and medium expenditure frameworks with the PF manifesto.
He said the PF government wants the public service to improve its service delivery because that is what is expected of it by Zambians. Mr Chibiliti urged permanent secretaries to find ways of maximising productivity in their respective ministries using available resources.
He said controlling officers should make their strategic plans based on available resources government allocates to their ministries.
He said he will give permanent secretaries more authority such as promoting staff as a way of motivating them so that they deliver to people’s expectations.
Mr Chibiliti said the Public Service Commission will no longer be responsible for promoting staff as this will be the duty of permanent secretaries.
And National Institute of Public Administration (NIPA) executive director Answell Saka said the learning institution is ready to help the public service become more effective in service delivery.
“NIPA is ready to take on new demands that will arise as the public service continues to respond to emerging challenges,” Mr Sakala said.
[Zambia Daily Mail]
This is what has been lacking for a long time now. Well done PF, this is lovely. Let these guys do some work for a change and YE Mr President make sure you fire them if they are not performing. Good stuff.
This is a very good move. Well done PF!!
Mr Chibiliti: We know you are Acting and u would do and say anything so that maybe u can be there permanently.Honestly, how can you evaluate the ministers when they don’t have powers and brains to do anything. All they do is to get a directive from Plot 1. For example, a justice minister will be directed by Plot 1 on which clause of the constitution to manipulate,Agriculture minister will be directed on which areas to take farming inputs to on time(those who voted for him) and Information minister on what nonsence to say on ZNBC. If we want pipo to work,takle the route cause of the problem first. Ministers can only say or do what pleases the president. This is why Sata who a minister in MMD can come out and acuse the same MMD of having supported Savimbi without shame when he was part of.
You seem to have been brainwashed by how things were done by the MMD! I know change and trying something new can be difficult to some of you people. What is wrong with doing what is proposed and see if it works? If doesn’t, there is that word again; “CHANGE!!”
Just from your names I can tell… You sound to be one of the Thomas in zambia… Let PF do it’s duty and its mistake in Plot. 1. for 20 years we gave you chance you never thought Of this Move… Now we hear even the V. Prsdo saying “Koswe ngakokola alalya nakasuba” If you can’t understand that Ask from the wise..
a step to rid corruption.
Bemba Kingdom
Good intention, but implementation will not be so easy especially for such a short duration of 3 months. It will be an administrative nightmare to get the system to work effectively. Even in corporates were performance contracts are used the evaluation cycle is larger than 3 months to allow for implementation and measurement of the agreed targets. I would recommend that it is done every 6 months and not quarterely.
Ba @#3 Don’t just be against if you want people to take your seriously offer a better solution. I think this is a step in the right direction if its implemented correctly. I hope the requirements will be made public so the minister can be held to account by the public as-well
Wonder if people like lapata,gbm, shamenda will make it.
My name id MMD Chief Bootlicker and i endorse and approve this move by the PF Government and fully support and applaud this action by Mr Sata’s Government. This indeed qualifies him to carry the label of “Man of Action” with pride and I look forward to seeing him execute this successfully.
Great job.
Very Objective Sir…
Lately you are being ingenious sir and thats really what human kind needs
sounds very progressive!!! we wait and see
At least we can have a positive comment from #8 “MMD Chief Bootlicker”. Ehh this man.
what an excellent step.
This is indeed great news for Zambia. As a developing country, we must ensure that our entities are not sold off just because we have made loses. The reason could be that we have wrong people in the management of those entities, or that those companies have not sharpened up their operational capabilities due to poor leadership. We must therefore ensure that we populate our companies with the most capable citizens of expatriate personnel if need be in order to grow our companies and country. Why don’t we hire expatriate CEO for say the UTH in order to improve its operations? Are we not sick of dull Zambian CEO’s who have failed to run this giant of a national hospital? We must think outside the box for solutions affecting our nation. I do not see anything wrong in hiring a CEO from
@MMD Chief Bootlicker @#8 – Well done this is the first positive and constructive comment i have seen from you! You are now coming back to reality, Big up to you and Don’t Kubeba!
This is long overdue and will remove from gvt all those ministers who joined just to fatten their bellies. instead of thinking how and where they can bury 2 billion Kwacha, they will be made to work for their money. Well done PF.
MMD chief bootliker, a positive comment, that is what we expect from u but I still have one big problem with you, ie you have up to now failed to confess that MMD had misused alot of our money during their campaigns and that their campaign was not African but European like. Why and how can RB manage to mark his names on watches, sweets, underwear, bungles, fitenges, vehicles, hats, blankets, corn ice cream, trees, while Zambians were suffering. If I where him and I am given all that money by a well wisher, I would still channel it into development.
@ MMD chief Bootlicker, see my comment @ 14 and confess.
Aviation #3 For once someone makes sense.Ministers are elected and appointed by the President. Parliament holds them accountable for their actions. Suggestions that Mr.Chibiliti makes should be to public workers. People that he holds accountable when they don’t do their job. If Zambians don’t understand their rights, roles and duties. How can you understand governance. If you don’t understand governance how do you hold government accountable? These are things that should be taught in Civics. Clearly, something is amiss and such pronouncement don’t fix the problem. With all the policy analysts at cabinet office, who in my opinion have a significant amount of education, the statement is quite embarrassing.
It is about time to try something new. How well it works is a discusion for another day. For now at least PF is showing us a new way of thinking. AMEN!!!!!!!!!!
cont….
This suggestion would work in the US where Cabinet is appointed outside Congress. Why not start with Permanent Secretaries and trickle down to Directors. I have listens at comments about the PF government and even in their board appointments there is loopsidedness. How does the Sec to Treasury become a board member of ZRA? If anything one of PSs at Finance should be. Bwana Chibiliti if these are the errors that are being made at cabinet office then government is being ill advised. Your after all an Ex-official in cabinet who should advise government in how things should be done.
Its called ”thinking outside the box” something Bantus wouldn’t appreciate.
Great move!!
MMD Chief Bootlicker well done. Mwa landa ifya mano for a change
These are ideas of progressive governments that mean business for their citizens, not the approach of RB of just sleeping and touring the world. Well done PF government and President Sata. We urge the Civil service to respond to this initiative and make it successful. Please dont let this be a theoretical concept only, we want this to work. We know there will be characters even among ministers that may not agree with this responsible approach to governance but those who are not ready to work genuinely for the country should consider leaving government, there are so many people who are genuinely interested to work. Once again, well done PF, well done Mr President and everyone involved in this initiative. God bless Zambia!
wonderful nice and perfect PF go HH is worried ,change will be seen soom in Zambia
That’s a good starting point. Exactly the sort of thing we expect with a pragmatic leadership.
Could the performance tools be introduced at parliamentary level? Could the MP have offices in their constituencies?
Isn’t why you have party structures in the wards, districts, and constituencies?
@msana wanzili ….Explain what you mean. Thinking outside the box suggests some logical thought was put into the suggestion or in this case the policy change. So who is going to evaluate the Minister? The PS, who reports to him? The Sec to Cabinet, who is an ex-off in cabinet? I would like to understand who is going enforce this evaluation the President? I would thought all President have some basis of doing this. Let’s not reinvent the wheel and Mr. Chibiliti is misplace by this. Let him stick to what is within his portfolio.
If you find this not sensible then you are a senseless negative moron I have ever listened to
Viva PF!
Good move. I have always advocated performance based scrutiny, not tribal based non-sense. These contracts directly imply set targets with a specific time frame, failure to attaining the same meaning demotion or removal of the stumbling block.
These are the type of things PF and MMD should have been demanding, but they are too petty and busy themselves fighting ghosts and shadows such as tribalism, retirement age and Satas’ minor verbal discharges.
Jata
You are just exposing your small mindedness on a public blog, my advice is please first read what Mr Chibilti said then comment.
Good move and I am impressed that all comments today are for positive development. That is GOOD BLOGGERS. The ministers MUST show work if they dont fire them.
Good news ONLY if the non-performing Ministers will not just be switched to other Ministries like we have just witnessed with Kambwili. Otherwise, the President will run out of MPs from which to select Ministers and we may end up with a Cabinet of Opposition MPs because 3 months is not a very long time.
An idea that has got great appeal to the electorate……..but one which has failed to work in countries where it has been. The challenge being that Ministerial jobs are not like those of corporate executives where there are objective measures like profit, sales, share price etc. Ministers respond to the dynamic reality of the political realm where performance is not so easy to measure what with factors such as loyalty, tribal balancing, rewards for active campaigning etc all being legitimate ingredients….Lastly it is next to impossible for the President to assess each and every member of a 20 man cabinet on a quarterly basis…..But then again perhaps the PF govt will overcome these challenges…I wish them well…..r
Good move Mr President! Just ensure that PS dont become biased and corrupt cos their is too much power given to one person – PS to promote, fire and demote. This power need be checked lest it is abused.Question is: What will be the role of Public Service Commission and Teaching Service Commision and other Commissions? Fired?
Another issue is, when a head teacher has a target say, to increase pass rate from 30% to 60% in 1 year, resources, say text books, enough teachers etc shud be provided by Gvt.
It is a simple example but everyone shuold apply it in their capacities.
Otherwise it is an excellent move!! Congratulations!!
@Peter Cool, This has worked very well in Rwanda where Ministers down to the Mayor level have to sign Performance based agreements. The media also use this to grade the annual performance of ministers and their teams
good move Mr President.
Looks good stuff. But let government impliment then I can comment…….comments reserved for now.
This is damn good move. Go go PF.
But the VP is already non performing since he cant act.
time will tell..these kolwestans will not perform!!
Good idea but three months is too short, does it mean there will be reshuffles every three months if a minister is not up to the task?
It is humbling to see the comments from MMD chief bootlicker. May be this way i will have some cash in the pocket mwe….!!
It will not work. We start with me. sata at state house.
You need a very large pool of quality people to appoint as ministers for this to succeed. I don’t think the PF has that.
Within 3 months PF assumed office nobody within PF has performed, apart from telling people lies, with contracts i dont see anyone who will remain in PF including the president because he has not performed.
Who will be assessing using what. How do you asses a minister without assessing a civil servant ? They are related.
Job #45, sure you read the article. Anyhow, I trust this is in order. We need to see roads being tarred, electricity installations and energy management going on WITHOUT an election year. I am sure this will bring some sanity to our society so that we no longer have to accept mediocrity as a way of life. All the best with this implementation.
Progressive move and should be extended to every worker in the public service.
What Mr Chibiliti (name heard in UNIPera) is proposing existed when he was in UNIP govt except that poiliticization resulted negatively to most Unip unschooled leaders. However, today that othodox administrative mantra has been overtaken by complex managemnet sytems based on novelty of creativity and innovation. 3 months contracts will not yield desired results. To begin with hardly 3 quarters of PF leaders would even know how to present performance regime dogma for monitoring and evaluations data placements. Resistance would earn some of them to be fired by Sata, a fault not of their own. These modern managerial techniques make sense to those who understand them. Moderate your approach Mr Chibiliti to be at same rate with most PF membership. Hard one indeed.
that is the reason behind me voting 4 PF.anyway that is a gud move and we are yet to hear from our leading opposition for nothing-he will oppose!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
This is inspiring. Quarterly assessment is the best and it would be great if the client in this case are the Zambian people would be on the panel to evaluate the perfomance of each Candidate to see that they are reporting the truth and supported by neutral citizen and the Minister and Councellors, then perfomance will be seen, It is perfomance in exchange for a vote equals money in the pocket of a minister! Position on the merit of hard working not favour!
‘window dressing’
Politicising the Civil Sevice is not the way to go. This is nonsense. Stop experimenting. The British left you a working system and you st.up.idly bastardised it. Catch a bus to Botswana and they will teach you why it is not necessarily to reinvent the the tyre. There is no civil service in the World where ,like in Zambia’s case, a politically appointed Permanent Secretary can be in charge of promotions. What this implies is that once there is change of govt the PS and all those he promoted would lose their jobs because the new govt would also want to remove ‘cobwebs’ like the PF did. This is the time to strengthen the Civil Service Commission and buildin a professional civil service!
Micromanaging will have disastrious effects. The desirable result would be, making public servie workers more accountable. Unfortunately, the structure of our government and attitude of its technocrats is such that this initiative will be used to cow juniors into doing all sorts.
If you look at the top, we all know our presidents ‘dictatorial tendencies’, so what will stop him bullying his ministers using these so called contracts. The contracts can only work if reviewed independently by a third party otherwise if implemented they will be the sure route to a full blown dictatorship.
Mr. Chibiliti Sir, this is a copy cat of what is in place in South Africa. Unlike your government, the South African president first outlines the government’s key strategic objectives (deliverables) in his state of the nation address. This state of the nation address comprises of inputs from all departments/ministries and thereafter each ministry then holds strategic planning workshops to formulates its own strategic plan to meet the overall national strategic objectives from which workplans are developed for each employ in the ministry. For Ministers, you need a seperate ministry tasked to monitor and evaluate each minister’s performance, NOT THE PRESIDENT. Please stop dreaming and get back to work. Has the government outlined its deliverablesyet?
Monitoring and evaluating one’s performance is a skill that Sata does not possess. Monitoring the performance of a minister is a good idea, but needs time to work through what is expected of each ministry. Suppose we say our main deliverables in a given period is to develop road infrastructure in Matero, Chamboli, Bwacha and to increase productivity in agriculture and mining, how do Ministries like energy and water development, justice, sport, labour, health and so on contribute to these deliverables. Iam not saying it cant be done but rather it takes a well though out strategy to formulate and implement. Dont be in hurry, your term may be 5yrs but Zambia will be around long after your term. Do what is right for Zambia. Give me a call and I will offer free advice.
MMD Chief Bootlicker has shown maturity and most of the time he is above politics. That’s the way to go Mudala! Thumbs up!!!!
GOOD MOVE PF.
Performance management systems work well where people know the vision and mission of the system. Most of the ministers and ministries are not guided by any vision and mission. You need a learned civil service and their heads to follow this not just barking.
Weldone guys… this is what we need …Run Govt on new public admnistration principles that is based on result orientation…. we need results. for instance The PF has not constructed any road…all the roads in the township where done by MMD. The president can say i need 3 roads to be done in each constituency and x concretised draniage sytem and x water lines or bole holes then give the minister the tools to deliver in x time period….. bravo this is good SMART GOALS should be applied. This should be done now now than never……
Weldone guys… this is what we need …Run Govt on new public admnistration principles that is based on result orientation…. we need results. for instance The PF has not constructed any road…all the roads in the township were done by MMD. The president can say i need 3 roads to be done in each constituency and x concretised draniage sytem and x water lines or bole holes then give the minister the tools to deliver in x time period….. bravo this is good SMART GOALS should be applied. This should be done now now than never……