Dear Editor,
In your Thursday, November 12, 2009 edition, Ms Vanita Jaipaul, in a letter to the editor, expressed her displeasure at the service she received at the GPO parcels counter (‘Lack of information, courtesy at GPO parcels section’). Her comments are not surprising since poor service seems to be the norm at government offices. What is surprising is that more people are not complaining.
Earlier this year, you published my letter calling for the establishment of performance standards at government buildings serving the public. This was in response to my experience at the Licensing Office and Deeds Registry, where I waited in line for long hours and made several trips to access services. In the latter case, the wait was due to closure for lunch. In that letter, I gave an example of what a simple standard for accessing service or paying bills would entail. The standard was “no one should have to travel further than the nearest town and wait more than 15 minutes to access or pay for a specific government service.” I opined that such a standard would force government managers to be innovative. For example, some services could be outsourced to the underutilized post office or commercial banks as is currently done with utility payments. Others could be accessed through the mail or on the internet instead of trekking to a government location. Some managers would realize that rotating employees lunch breaks so that service is not interrupted is also a means to meet the standard. Those managers unable to innovate are underperforming and should be retrained or relieved of their managerial duties. From an auditing standpoint, the value of such a performance standard is its measurability and objectivity. An auditor can quite easily determine the travel distance and time spent in line of a sample of people waiting to access government services. Other performance standards that need to be addressed are those dealing with quality of the service – for example Ms Jaipaul’s complaint – where government employees’ attitudes and professionalism are evaluated. Such appraisals can be easily accomplished by establishing simple questionnaires on service just received and the employment of suggestion boxes.
When one considers the long lines of people waiting at the licensing office, the registrar’s office or any other government facility, and the length of time the wait entails one gets a feel of the damage this is causing the country’s GNP. This is so because when one is standing in line, one is not producing and thus adding to the GNP. In addition, the unnecessary travel required from the many return trips also saps GNP and adds to the country’s huge oil bill and the consequential cost-of-living increases. There is nothing revealing in this, and these cost consequences are well known to government economists, but yet no improvements are put into place. Perhaps if more service consumers, like Ms Jaipaul, were to express publicly their displeasure, this would form the catalyst for overcoming government inertia and get needed reforms implemented.
Yours faithfully,
Louis Holder
