An Official’s Visit: Between Zeal and Conscience

13-9-2018

- I experienced the rituals of public service at the beginning of 1972 when I worked as a māmūr taqdīr for income tax in Nablus for two and a half years... and I did not need—by comparison... until I worked in the private banking sector in mid-1974. At that time I felt there was a difference... between the characteristics of the two jobs in time use, daily productivity levels, and volume of work.... So I found that there was a clear difference: postponing work was not part of the work lexicon in our private sector, nor was there enough time even to eat a sandwich to silence our hunger... Our work was not subject to anyone's whim... so there were no stops in the workflow, no rest stations... the daily execution targets were wide... we did not pretend to work by piling files in front of us..... Meanwhile, in the public sector we used to have two meals a day, in addition to cups of tea and coffee at no charge... and we used to postpone assessing certain files to a day when the mood was more relaxed... and this used to happen daily... in the public job... except for awaiting a visit from an official once a month. Then we would pile files in front of us... and we would try to perform noisy and visible tasks so that the incoming official would feel that everything was fine... and that the work was proceeding according to the drawn plan...... Time passed and that was an era decades ago... but I see that the public service now, after all this time, still needs real oversight and supervision... from the responsible ministries.

- Between effort... the serious work of the official—who may be a minister, a director general, or an advisor—in showing concern and supervising the work in the public sector under his authority... and between the credibility of the integrity of that official... lies a wide spectrum of types of officials’ displays of zeal over proper work conduct and its development, or of stirring interest in their positions. Some of these officials practice supervision over their subordinates from the heart and with devotion.... An official may make an inspection visit or a surprise visit to a workplace that provides services to the public... It is natural that after appointment the official, after a short time, conducts repeated inspection visits to the work sites affiliated with his ministry or to designated sites... and without media fanfare... because the purpose of those visits is the public good... only.

- As for those officials who only record before the media that they are present... the official seeks to send a message to the public that he is the new blood in the field and that he will spare no effort to develop the work... The visit may be before appointments and promotions... or before general or union elections... or after the official has been appointed temporarily during the senior official’s leave to run the ministry or institution... to demonstrate his fitness to work according to the latest standards of professionalism... Those who care only about their positions and do not engage in the battle for the public good are the ones we blame...(“They fill us with maʿrājil”)!

- These few—though they are many—fabricate a story that contains elements of deception so that the seasonal zeal of the official, knocking on the doors of public institutions and checking the smoothness of service delivery to the public, appears genuine. He makes an inspection visit to a worksite belonging to his ministry or district; preparations and arrangements are made for it biṭnah wa rinnah with an echo, to the extent that it seems to achieve its results in personal publicity even before the inspection visit actually takes place. What the civil servants at the worksite do, based on verbal directions from their supervisors and managers, is prepare and get ready for the approaching ministerial official’s visit at the site, as a scenario... so that it appears there is no delay in work, no wasted time, everyone uses time according to strict standards... employees are away from social media and do not speak on their mobile phones at work, do not play any electronic games... there is no cliquishness, no infighting. All this painted picture is drawn by the managers and the employees at the worksite chosen for the minister’s visit... throughout the period of his visit... and after it the situation returns to normal as it was before... that is, the world becomes without good: the number of civil servants in this ministry or that is inflated...

- The minister is responsible for his sector and must dot the i’s and cross the t’s, both what is evident and what is hidden... according to the public interest. Such visits should be an effective supervisory tool stemming from the official’s sense and zeal for the public good and from the ideas that belong to these officials.... They should not be visits ordered by a superior official or the result of a report by administrative oversight bodies, nor should the visit be a settling of scores between a former official and the current official in the ministry aimed at exposing the predecessor’s faults to higher authorities so that he secures a seat he might occupy in a later formation...!!!

- Performance in public service must be with commitment, enthusiasm, dedication, and zeal... and the employee should not wait for a seasonal official’s visit to complete his work with honesty and dedication...

- We all dislike that portion of hypocrisy and pretending responsibility at work... or recording achievements in the media..... They say there is a proverb... we do not want him to be like us in our public work: “Shubb eqshaʿeenī yā marrah”!!!

- The objectives of the visit and its timing, frequency, choice of sites, duration of the officials’ visit, and the criteria by which the official supervises and effects change—all of these must be studied according to a serious and responsible program, in which follow-up correction of the cited shortcomings takes place... and in which the pulse of the site is regularly measured in its natural state!!
It has been said that the resemblance between an official making an inspection visit to a public service site and boasting about it until the visit ends is like police inspection campaigns on seat-belt use and issuing fines to violators: a campaign that does not last long. You find that the majority of the public begin fastening seat belts at the moment they see police patrols... in the public streets.... But after the campaign ends the public relax in their vehicles from all those rules they adhered to during the traffic campaign; afterward you will not find anyone using a seat belt except on external roads and out of fear of highway patrols—unless monitoring campaigns with the public are continuous until the matter stabilizes and becomes a binding habit...

- To the officials we say... we are a people under occupation... states are not built this way... truly...!!!
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