THIS week, I want to address three issues, two that seem to have gripped the attention of the public and the media recently.

The first has to do with the health benefits afforded to government personnel and others.

I get that it is understandable that people are going to be naturally concerned about the appearance of special favours in government, especially as it relates to as important an issue as personal health.

My concern is that personal health is an issue that is, primarily personal. Publishing the names of persons who have benefitted from this mechanism takes the reporting on this issue out from under the protection of “in the public interest” and makes it less about the issue and more about the personalities, and their personal life.

I understand perfectly the sort of unrelenting scrutiny a person can feel when their health issues are put into the public domain. When I made the choice a few years ago to take the initiative and publicise my own health problems voluntarily, it was a challenging decision for me, even though it was my own choice.

The second issue is that of attacking donor agencies and IFIs in response to the release of funding at a politically contentious time. As someone who has had a great deal of experience with the internationally community, I believe that two things need to be taken into consideration. One, donor agencies are bound by international law to deal with the legitimate government of the day, and unless there is some grave crisis and government becomes absolutely dysfunctional, their primary mandate is providing development assistance to the State via its legitimate administrative officers. In short, the Development Bank would not give precedence to an Opposition political party, however legitimate that party feels its concerns might be, over a legitimate government with its own legitimate agenda.

Two, these institutions do no operate to the timeline as defined by local politics – the related project is planned many months, sometimes years in advance. Funds that are being released this month, where not assigned or planned last month but most likely last year, before prorogation and before elections were announced. From an IFI perspective, the presumption is that we, as a country, will get our business together and be functional and competent enough to fulfill our end of the partnership. I would caution any party, particularly any party that seeks to enter government, against creating an unnecessarily hostile relationship with international partners.

The third issue that I want to look at this week is not so much a hot topic but a perennial problem, that of public sector workshops and whether some are as useful as they can be.
An anecdote that I think adequately sums up what some public sector employees do, as it relates to ‘workshops’, comes from an encounter I had with a certain ministry worker who was participating in a workshop funded by the donor agency I was part of.

Learning that the staff member was the beneficiary of several overseas and local workshops, I asked her what the primary benefit of her participation was, to which she looked at me before replying in a confidential tone, “Boss, when they are workshops, I don’t have to cook or buy lunch and in the case where the event is held overseas I look forward to my Perdiem.”
Let me make it clear that I believe workshops that run properly are valuable tools for shaping public policy and/or building individual and institutional capacity.

However, the danger (and arguably the reality) is that some workshops are actually primarily talk shops, where much is discussed but no actual work, not even preparatory work, is done. In my view, a few things need to be considered before an agency decides to either host or participate in a workshop. Primary is whether the workshop adds value to a pre-established programme, either directly or by enhancing the capacity of the agency’s participant(s).

Almost equally important is how optimum value is extracted post-workshop. If a person represents a ministry at one, there should be mechanisms in place to have that person transfer whatever knowledge to the institution he or she is representing, outside of the basic report that is currently standard practice.

Then there is the issue of pre-workshop (the organisation who was invited to attend) preparation, something that is often lacking, so that when a representative attends a workshop, because they are ill-prepared, they cannot adequately represent their respective agency’s interests and hence ensure that if there is some concrete outcome that agency is adequately represented.

Next week I will address the impact on the organisation’s work programme when some of its key personnel are frequently away from the office and the transfer of knowledge at the institutional level.

By Keith Burrowes