Call to train senior Govt officials

that enables them to understand government operations and public sector performance, a senior Government official has said.
Chief Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet, Dr Misheck Sibanda, said this while officially opening a training seminar for senior Government managers in Harare on Thursday. Dr Sibanda said the formation of the Inclusive Government in 2009 ushered in a new dispensation with its own challenges.
“The formation of the inclusive Government saw new top civil servants joining Government with little public sector experience.
‘A top civil servant needs multi-dimensional skills such as skills to deal with colleagues at their level, skills to lead subordinates and skills to interact with superiors and the general public they serve,” Dr Sibanda said.
He said Government has since engaged the Eastern and Southern African Management Institute (ESAMI) to assist in the training of permanent secretaries, principal directors and directors. This training will enable the senior Government officials to properly execute their duties in the inclusive Government.
“The engagement of Esami to spearhead the training programme for senior managers shows the seriousness and resoluteness of Government in ensuring that there is improved public sector performance,” Dr Sibanda said.
The training that would commence with directors and permanent secretaries, he said, would enhance the capacity of the public officials in senior positions to deliver quality service to the citizens. It will also help bureaucrats to understand their roles and responsibilities in the discharge of their mandates among other issues.
“The pursuit of our national vision and the nation’s economic priorities immensely requires innovative bureaucrats whose discharge of mandates should result in improved public sector performance and the delivery of quality services to the people,” he said.
Dr Sibanda said the modern day public demands high quality service and always scrutinises the performance of bureaucrats, hence the need to continuously build capacities of the civil servants. He noted that resources from the fiscus continued to dwindle and this, coupled with policy implementation inertia and at times lack of accountability by those in high positions in Government, resulted in frustration of the beneficiaries of services.
“In light of this, one mechanism of improving public sector performance of providing the necessary skills to the senior management in Government is what we intend to do now,” he said.
Dr Sibanda said the team of consultants from ESAMI led by Mr Martin Lyewe and Government would develop training modules that would help achieve the objectives.
He said that Government in its capacity building endeavours would extend the training programmes to middle management. Mr Lyewe said the institute would help in widening the horizons, improving executive skills and to understand management as a process of balanced judgment.
“The main aim has always been to keep African managers up to date with modern management thinking and at the same time enable them to take stock,” Mr Lyewe said.
Esami is a pan-African regional management development centre, run by Governments from the East and Southern Africa. The member countries include Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Namibia and Seychelles. The institute is service and market oriented offering high level specialised management training and development programmes, consultancy and action oriented management research services. Its target clients include central and local government, regional and international institutions and parastatals among others. So far over 70 000 middle and top level personnel in government, parastatals and other sectors have attended management development programmes offered by the institute.