Masari laments decay in civil service

From Lawal Sa’idu Funtua Katsina

The Katsina state Governor, Alhaji Aminu Bello Masari has lamented that the civil service has lost confidence in itself at the inception of present administration.
Alhaji Aminu Masari was speaking when he received the Head of civil service of Katsina state, Alhaji Usman Idris Tune who led permanent secretaries to pay him a Sallah homage at Government House, Katsina.
Governor Masari explained that the present administration had been making frantic efforts to reposition the civil service for optimum productivity.
The governor described the civil service as the engine vehicle for the implementation of government policies and programmes stressing that with time, however, the implementation had been corrupted resorting to recruitment of consultants or contractors to do the civil service work.
He recalled that the tenure policy introduced by the federal government was copied by the previous administration with negative consequence that helped in crippling the civil service in the state.
He said at the federal level, the tenure policy introduced was to check stagnation and in the process, even if it was done with good intention, some permanent secretaries took advantage and the casualties were more from the northern part of Nigeria.
He remarked that most of the civil servants at the federal level were those from states and local governments absorbed into the federal civil service to balance and bridge the gap between north and south.
The effect of the tenure policy at the state level, he said was that it created a huge gap and almost eliminated middle and senior level manpower in the state adding that right now in the ministries, one could hardly find one or two civil servants that could effectively write a good memo.
He said the tenure policy was abolished in Katsina state as it made government service to be delayed, saying what could be done in hours takes weeks to be done with qualified workers sent off by the system.
He assured that professionalism would also continue to receive government attention for effective service delivery so that not all government jobs would be given to consultants or contractors.
Earlier, the Head of Civil Service, Alhaji Usman Idris Tune told the Governor that they were at Government House to pay Sallah homage to him.