By Keith Burrowes

ACCOUNTABILITY, particularly within public organizations and offices, has been a theme that I have addressed ever so often in this column, and it is something that I believe needs to be revisited as well.

Indeed, the inaugural installment of ‘Critical Perspectives’ dealt with public sector accountability and the need for a system of assessment and enforcement of professional responsibility in the execution of public and private sector programmes. Accountability, personal or otherwise, in public life is an issue that this column will revisit time and again.

There has consistently been, in my view, an absence of mechanisms to link the indicators as reflected in workplans to the individual’s specific responsibilities as outlined in their terms of references. Yet, mechanisms of monitoring and control should not be the only, or even major, factors to ensure accountability.
Intrinsically linked to accountability is the sense of personal responsibility that people have, or should have, when it comes to the performance of their designated duties – in short, it should not be just the axe of punitive measures which is the major impetus for personal responsibility but other factors need to come into play.
One such factor that I want to deal with in this column is that of the culture of excuses, which seems to pervade this society. There always seems to be grey areas in terms of accountability in Guyana, and the casual approach by individuals in so many spheres of activity in accepting the responsibility they are charged with, and paid for, in their professional capacity. The problem, of course, comes back to our culture here. We have a fatal combination of little sense of individual responsibility and a system which does not enforce accountability.

‘We have a fatal combination of little sense of individual responsibility and a system which does not enforce accountability’

This is not to say that there are no existing systems geared at ensuring accountability within the various ministries, semi-autonomous agencies and the Private Sector in Guyana – I know for a fact there are. It is also clear that the Government of Guyana has, in recent times, been moving towards greater overall accountability.
As a matter of principle, if people fail to carry out the duties they have been given the responsibility and are paid to perform, then the system should be able to identify why; if it is determined that the individual is at fault, then that person should be sanctioned. However, the present labor laws of hiring and firing do not lend easily to any immediacy of accountability, nor is there any system of linking remuneration to it. The onus is therefore left on the individual to enforce a system where you plan what you intend to do; you implement what you plan; you alternatively check, or study, the process; and you act to change what needs to be changed.
The basic point is that while we need mechanisms which drive accountability in a systemic way, it is necessary to ensure as much as possible that there is very little need for those sort of systems to come into play. People need to be aware and feel part of the process – both the grand raison d’etre of the organization and the short-term goals. They also need to know how they are required to contribute and how their contribution will be judged. A person who feels that he or she, as an individual, is inextricably tied into an organization’s goals and targets will find it difficult to make an excuse for not completing a task because there will not be that disassociation with which, it can be argued, so many in the public service view their jobs. When that sort of awareness comes into play, perhaps then the propensity for making excuses may just be diminished.