Soon after taking office, SA’s Finance Minister Tito Mboweni championed a plan to cut the public service by offering attractive early retirement packages. He was so enthused about this idea to cut the wage bill that Treasury budgeted on 30,000 employees taking up the offer. It’s two years later and only 4,000 have done so.
An email received yesterday from a State-employed PhD suggests there wasn’t much wrong with Tito’s plan. It failed, rather, because of poor execution. Our correspondent shares that after hearing of the package from a friend, he inquired officially only to be told the expiry date was “tomorrow”. He urges the finmin to have another go as “proper communication would rake in at least a 500% increase.”
In the pre-Budget presser Mboweni shared how difficult it is to move the needle within the public sector. That’s hardly a surprise. Resistance to change is part of the human condition. But it runs especially strongly through in veins of those who consciously trade ambition for the (State) security of guaranteed employment.
But there’s a bigger theme. Whether it’s in the private or public sector, execution is the toughest part of every proposed process. It requires self-discipline and focus, increasingly rare attributes in our always-on device-driven age of distraction. But it can be done. And for Tito, where stakes are so high, is certainly worth another try.
