The Sunday Mail
Kuda Bwititi
Government has completed crafting new employment contracts for heads of ministries, parastatals and State-owned enterprises, with senior employees expected to ascent to the new working conditions in the coming weeks.The Office of the President and Cabinet last week said it had fine-tuned the contracts which will ensure senior office bearers are guided by specific deliverables in line with the goals of the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-Asset).
The objective is to measure performance and facilitate demotion, redeployment or firing of non-performing individuals.
Permanent secretaries, directors of Government departments, heads of parastatals and State enterprises and leaders of local authorities will soon be offered the new contracts.
Deputy Chief Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet Colonel (Retired) Christian Katsande told The Sunday Mail that the contracts waited Presidential approval only.
“The monitoring and evaluation department is one of the core departments in the OPC and for 2015, we have decided to reinforce the system so that we get desired results from our senior officers. We have drawn up the contracts for 2015 and anytime from now the officers will be signing them,” he said.
Rtd Col Katsande said the annual contracts would be reviewed quarterly or at the discretion of the Chief Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet.
The contracts outline specific performance targets.
“These contracts will be signed between the Chief Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet and the heads of departments. Ideally they are supposed to be reviewed quarterly but depending on the nature of the set targets the review process can be done bi-annually.
“In the contracts, priority areas and targets are clearly outlined in line with Zim-Asset. In the event that these targets have not been met, the official has an opportunity to explain the reasons and it is then up to the Chief Secretary to make a decision.”
Rtd Col Katsande said the Chief Secretary would not accept inadequate funding as an excuse for non-performance by contracted officials.
“Very often, the most common excuse given by these officials is that they do not receive adequate allocations from the Finance Minister. While we call upon the minister to give full allocations to ministries and other relevant departments, lack of resources should not be an excuse for failure to do work.
“Heads of departments should learn to be innovative to get Government business on track. You cannot just sit on your laurels saying there are no financial resources without looking at other means of getting the work going.”
Government adopted the performance appraisal system in 2013 after the harmonised elections of that year.
The system’s structure is based on the guidelines of the Public Service Act as well as the provisions of the new Constitution.
