PM: Resource, remuneration issues no excuse for poor service in public sector

While agreeing that customer service across the public sector is of a lower-than-desirable standard, Prime Minister Andrew Holness yesterday encouraged workers in the government service to always empathise with Jamaicans and strive to meet or exceed their expectations.

Noting, too, that public sector workers are notorious for casting judgement, Holness said, “Empathy is simply listening, withholding judgement and emotionally connecting and communicating a message to our customers that they are not alone in their suffering or distress.”

While launching the Service Excellence Policy for the public sector yesterday at the Office of the Prime Minister, Holness stressed that exercising empathy could eliminate many unnecessary challenges facing the public sector.

“The intention of the policy is to change the behaviour of the public sector when providing service to our customers and to create a culture of excellence across the public sector. ... We must become customer-focused and this applies to both our internal and external customers,” he said.

“We, therefore, have to set performance standards, improve capacity, promote excellence and establish effective systems of management and accountability,” the prime minister added.

Holness said that over the past 25 to 30 years, Jamaica has sought to introduce several initiatives to improve service delivery, which had some positive impacts in individual public sector entities, but there was room for improvement across the sector.

“Our citizens expect and deserve quality service in all interactions and as the largest service provider, the public sector must lead in that regard,” he said.

Further, he noted that all ministries, departments and agencies will be required to constantly challenge themselves to ensure that the goods and services they provide are designed for the benefit of the customers.

“Improved efficiency and service means improved productivity, which means a positive impact on the growth of our economy, which means more jobs, which means our citizens prosper, and when our citizens prosper, we all benefit,” the prime minister added.

Improved service delivery, he argued, will ultimately result in reduced waste and cost, fewer complaints and happier citizens.

Holness also brushed aside arguments that unsatisfactory remuneration packages and inadequate resources are at the root of poor service delivery.

“My position is that … it is a valid argument, but it is not an excuse. It may be a reason for low service, but it does not excuse low service because built into the transactional argument regarding service is a sense that the public sector exists to serve itself – a very dangerous posture,” he said, noting that a key factor in the remuneration discussion must be the issue of productivity.

Jamaica Civil Service Association President O'Neil Grant noted that the new world-of-work paradigm is changing how public offices conduct and deliver service.

“And so as workers in a public service that is 60 per cent women, at least, we recognise that work-life integration and its impact on the delivery of excellent service is something that must be guided by policy and we welcome with open arms the move that has been created to launch such a policy to bring all the work that we have been doing over many years,” he said.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com