If ever there was an oxymoron in the making, it has to be ‘civil servants and performance bonuses’.
In the face of rapidly deteriorating service delivery at all levels of the State, it seems incomprehensible that government employees should be rewarded over and above their (generous in most cases) salary packages.
Yet, as the Sunday Times of April 28 reports, almost R3bn in performance bonuses and ‘other incentives’ have been paid to civil servants in the 2019-2024 period.
The article also highlights that this five-year period was also one in which ‘tax revenues came under increasing strain’.
Moses Mushi, spokesman for the Department of Public Service and Administration (PSA), revealed that R2.4bn in performance bonuses was paid out to 706 000 civil servants.
By my estimate, that’s almost 60% of the current cohort of 1.3m civil servants in current government employ.
Simple logic dictates that if more than 60% of a labour force is being rewarded for exceptional performance, the organisation (the State in this case) should be humming along like a well-oiled machine across all departments.
Does this sound like the government we all interact with at local, provincial and national levels?
Mushi adds insult to injury by saying ‘… managing the wage bill continued to be aligned with the delivery of services’. Seriously, Mr. Mushi?
PSA Minister Noxolo Kiviet, responding in Parliament, said ‘Employees are rewarded based on their moderated performance assessment, on whether they have performed above the expected level’.
Above the expected level, Minister?
How about starting at the ‘expected level’?
Is it likely that anyone in water and sanitation or electricity or health at any tier of government performed at anywhere near the ‘expected levels’?
I am certain that the amounts paid out in the R2.4bn quantum above will include officials from these departments that have overseen a near collapse of service delivery from their departments.
Kiviet speaks about (measuring) ‘the department’s performance against the planned targets included in its annual performance plan’, in determining the award of performance bonuses.
The sad reality is that, unlike in the private sector, where performance-based incentives are used to spur employees into exceptional outcomes (for themselves and the company), they have become, in the state sector, an artificial tool to inflate salaries, with assessment bars being set at ridiculously low levels, where they exist at all.
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