It is insulting, unnecessary and irresponsible to say that civil servants are “sitting there doing nothing”.
This has been highlighted by Minister for Lands and Mineral Resources Filimoni Vosarogo after Opposition MP Jone Usamate said that when he walks around Government ministries, he sees people who do not appear to have anything to do and are sitting there doing nothing, which reflects weaknesses in the civil service performance management system.
Usamate made the comments during Parliament’s debate on the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence’s review report on the Ministry of Civil Service 2022-2023 Annual Report on Monday.
Responding to the comments, Vosarogo says to walk through a Government ministry, see someone sitting at a desk and conclude that they have nothing to do is an extraordinary way to judge the performance of an entire workforce.
He says a few seconds of observation tells you absolutely nothing about an officer’s workload, what they have completed that day, what they are waiting on, or the work taking place electronically, in the field, or through Government systems that Usamate simply does not see.
Vosarogo says he is fairly certain Usamate has not observed the daily work of every civil servant across every ministry and department in Fiji, and therefore has no reasonable basis to make such a sweeping generalisation.
He says if Usamate has evidence of officers who are not performing, he should produce it, but he should not insult thousands of hardworking Fijians on the strength of casual observations while walking through Government offices.
Vosarogo says civil servants should be assessed based on their actual performance and results, not whether they happened to look busy at the precise moment an Opposition MP walked past their desk.
He says Usamate is a former Minister and knows very well that the work of Government extends far beyond what can be seen from an office corridor.
He stresses that Fiji’s civil servants deserve better than this kind of careless generalisation and unfounded insults.
