Councillors’ jack of all trades task

Few occupations at the grass-roots level come close to one of ‘jack of all trades and master of none’ done by elected public representatives.

As the face of the community, they are called councillors not of a psycho-social nature and their toil is not for the fainthearted. For the truly committed ones, it’s a calling that needs no qualification but a spirit of helping and, 24/7 dedication to the public wanting solutions from the mundane to complex and sometimes bizarre challenges.  Some want solutions to self-inflicted problems or for just repeated advice. Others descend on these ‘poor’ souls with myopic requests as if to punish them for raising their hands to a call of duty which, though it has commendable frills and reasonable packs.

This makes them also easy villains to accusations that they are more answerable to political agendas than those who elected them. However, the truly committed ones should be distinguished by the nature of their commitment to duty, quality of their work, positive attitude and public relations and the risks they are prepared to take in the interest of the public and to their self-preservation.

The truly genuine will, when forced to exit or at end of tenure, leave the public still hoping they would remain while the others, leave severely bruised and their ego dented when their marching orders are prefixed with ‘good riddance’. A recent encounter by this journalist revealed traits of the former when his patience was stretched to the limit by one people-oriented councillor.

This was when a scheduled appointment was scuppered by hordes of residents who consistently streamed into the public servant’s office, hence, competing for his attention. Despite his reassurance that we would meet ‘shortly’, the endless streaming in continued for a range of advice on job opportunities, where and how to seek other services and for inquiries on the outcome of previous public meetings they missed for seemingly flimsy reasons they couldn’t justify.

Others sought verification of their bona fides needed by prospective employers, banks and other places as well as on housing issues.

A few popped in for the local gossip and still I wouldn’t get this servant’s attention as it seemingly is part of the territory. With the queue still endless, I still hung on hoping that my turn would come only to err. With the slightest of misjudgments, I took a brief stroll out of the servant’s office and into the hallway lined with his ‘çlients’ to make calls reaffirming delays to my other scheduled appointments. This cost me dearly when on my return, the much-in-demand public servant had vanished right underneath my nose.

That slight absence was an opportune moment, but not deliberate, for my target to slip away to the other of his never-ending demands. I lived to regret the missed opportunity on news I wanted badly about his ward, politics, development and Alex’s never-ending woes. In the end, I had to live with it, miss or shorten my other engagements with those who were patient with me.

A good lesson learnt was never to loose sight of the sought-after public servants in the future. If needs be, maybe insist on meeting elsewhere or locking the door to the displeasure of other clients. Also, it revealed to the contrary, the often-heard falsehoods peddled around deriding all, if not most public servants, as ‘hopeless and good for nothing’. There is evidence of many who are committed to the call and could likely do more if their choices derived from the people to whom they would feel more beholden.

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