LETTER: State’s HR ensures SA is staffed by incompetents

One of the cornerstones of the world of work, the appointment of senior staff in particular, is to ensure the people who are appointed are “fit for purpose”.  On a daily basis as a labour lawyer, I am faced with investigations into staff who have been appointed into positions beyond their capability. 

The private sector holds human resource practitioners responsible for these irregular appointments and disciplinary action is taken against such administrative personnel.  Furthermore, the private sector monitors and assesses its staff during the probationary period and invariably non-functioning employees do not have their positions confirmed beyond the probationary period.

However, it is completely the opposite in the public sector.  The Public Service Commission has just advised that about 1,800 senior managers within the public service do not have any qualifications. In most cases it appears that government did not even have any verifying data about these individuals. No wonder service delivery in SA has completely collapsed.

A future DA government will have its work cut out assessing, monitoring and rightsizing the senior management of the public service. One cannot blame those senior managers who have been appointed into positions beyond their competence. We have to blame not only human resource departments across the board, but also the ANC government, which has facilitated this through cadre deployment. 

The recipe for the destruction of the civil service has been carefully implemented by the ANC government. It will not be a simple task to restructure the civil service to make it functional, but it will have to be done.

Michael Bagraim, MP
DA employment & labour spokesperson

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