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Monday, December 11, 2006

Performance Reviews and Kimunya's NARC-otic Rant

Not only is President Kibaki receiving a humongous pay rise (unconnected, by the way, to any performance review), the government has shown no inkling to punish or sanction any of the poorly performing ministries named in the recently released review of Government departments. Apart from naming and shaming the relevant Ministries, that is.

Now, it's all very good to name and shame. However, according to the DPM website, Permanent Secretaries and Accounting Officers did sign performance contracts on 7th February 2006, detailing the goals and targets they were expected to meet, and promising sanctions for non-compliance. Such contracts (and the review) are not worth the paper they are printed on if these officials are not fired for failing to fulfil them. Not transferred, FIRED!

And how about holding the Ministers responsible for the performance of their ministries? Are they not part of the "working nation" and shouldn't they have to justify their obscene salaries?

On a different note, Mambo's Blog reports that Finance Minister Amos Kimunya thinks "the good old story that there's no water in Nairobi taps is gone. Everyone is getting water". Speaking at the Kenya Diaspora Investment Forum in London, he also said that corruption was a thing of the past. Well, I think the poor Minister assumed his audience did not read Kenyan newspapers. Water rationing is a hard fact of life in Nairobi and his Justice and Constitutional Affairs counterpart would probably disagree with the notion that Kenya is corruption free. After all, she did publish a "List of Shame" and included several of her Cabinet colleagues in it.

And, interestingly, Jimnah Mbaru, when asked at the same forum whether economic growth can only be guaranteed under a Kibaki Administration, is reported to have said that no fundamentals had changed since 2002 -except the election of Kibaki. I have maintained in my posts that NARC is an impediment rather than a facilitator of economic growth. Sure they are less of an impediment than KANU ever was, but an impediment nonetheless. It now seems that no lesser personage than the Chairman of the Nairobi Stock Exchange agrees.

4 comments:

TDLM said...

Gathara,

It was nice chatting with you on meebo!

Also, I'm glad you like BlogFlare. Let me know if you have any feedback to give and I'll try and incorporate them into the service!

I saw your ranking was set, by the way.

Happy Blogging!
Scott M. Weaver

Anonymous said...

Interesting that you would consider criticism of Kibaki by Jimnah who is a known critic of all things Kibaki to be definitive. It might be a good idea to hold on before drinking the Kool Aid and use independent sources to substantiate your position. Mbaru is not exactly a source of fair and balanced criticism in this arena - his run-ins with those in political power today are for the large part in the public domain.

Why do you think that it is the responsibility of the office of the President to fire and hire permanent secretaries and accounting officers?

Government structure implies that account officers and PSs report to ministers who are responsible for hiring and firing them. Why would you choose to make that the president's job? You make that very assertion in your third paragraph.

You assume that PSs and Accounting Officers did not meet their performance goals per the contracts they signed. Go back and check to see if they in fact did do so (hint: the goals were set very very low).



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Gathara said...

Steve,
Jimnah Mbaru is well within his rights to criticize the government. That doesn't make him any less credible.

Secondly, it is the President, and not his Ministers, who hires and fires Permanent Secretaries.

As for the performance contracts, I am indeed assuming that PSs and Accounting Officers in ministries that performed poorly, did not meet their required targets. I do not think that is an unreasonable assumption.

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