Most of the time, awards are given to those who do not deserve or merit them in any way and this continues to dampen the morale of truly hardworking civil servants. The apparatus to get the best workers should include nominations and votes from workers themselves.
In every department or parastatal are people who truly stand out and who everyone knows to be the best when it comes to performance, and such people are easy to find out by anyone desirous of doing so. For instance, if teachers are to be given awards, nominations should first of all be sought from teachers generally.
Again, the inspectors in different categories through their records should also be able to confirm any choices made by teachers and the principals’ body called ANCOPSS should also be actively involved. Then, teachers can still be drafted to vote for whoever among them they think is really doing a good job.
Candidates’ regularity at work should be one of the key factors for awards because it’s unfair to leave those who are hardly absent from their desks and choose those who usually have an excuse or another to stay away. From all of these, the government will be able to arrive at more acceptable and well-deserving civil servants.
As of now, the process is highly compromised and lacks merit because it allows individuals to choose themselves and then forward so many spurious documents through the Internet which are used in making the final selection. This should be jettisoned and a more open approach should be adopted, else the government will continue to crown the wrong persons while the truly conscientious workers are robbed of what normally should be a morale booster to them.
Jide Oyewusi wrote from
Lagos.
