Purge of was long overdue

THIS week, the Sam Matekane-led government embarked on a massive exercise to purge the civil service of individuals who were un-procedurally recruited under the previous administration.

The Ministry of Communications has already booted out 70 temporary workers.

A further 3 593 workers at the Ministry of Public Service are also facing a similar fate after they were unlawfully appointed into the civil service.

About 6 000 workers are likely to be affected by the clean-up exercise.

While the repercussions at the personal level will be devastating, we would like to believe that this exercise was long overdue as it gives the government a chance to clean up a civil service that had become beholden to narrow political interests.

Successive governments in Lesotho had for years been forced to fend off allegations that they were in the business of dishing out jobs to their cronies on the basis of political affiliation, a charge they feebly denied.

Such nepotistic practices resulted in the government flooding the civil service with their cronies who in most cases were hopelessly unqualified for the jobs.

This was one of the major grievances among Basotho for years. It caused much frustration for Basotho.

It is against this basis that we think an exercise to clean up the civil service of political appointees was long overdue.

Predictably, the opposition is not happy with the Matekane-led government’s push to fire the workers. That was to be expected.

We would like to argue that the opposition must accept part of the blame for creating the mess in the first place. It would be an act of duplicity to deny culpability when they were at the centre of the mess for years.

The opposition needs to accept that mistakes were made so that they can become part of the process in seeking cogent proposals on how this can now be fixed.

The government must now demonstrate that it is committed to a truly clean, transparent process in fixing the mess.

This would be good for Lesotho.

In its zeal to clean up the civil service, the government must ensure that this purge does not create chaos and halt developmental projects that were already in full swing.

It must ensure that there is continuity.

It is obvious that the civil servants who are being booted will need to be replaced. These jobs will need to be advertised in a clear, transparent process to give every Mosotho a fair chance for a crack at the jobs.

It would be sad were the government to seek to purge the civil servants only to create vacancies for their own Revolution for Prosperity (RFP) supporters. We hope the government will not fall into this trap.

If that is done, that would be tragic. This should be a government for all Basotho

The Matekane-led government came into power on the basis that it would do better than the previous regimes that were in charge. They set the bar higher for themselves and so they must deliver.

It is our hope that the government will extend this exercise to clean up the civil service of all ghost workers. A lean, clean civil service will certainly better for the interests of Basotho.

We also note with satisfaction that the government has begun floating adverts inviting qualified Basotho to start applying for the posts of Principal Secretaries.

That process must be free of political contamination.