Public sector institutions will have to mainstream a new productivity management style that seeks to enhance efficiency and effective service delivery to the citizens, a senior ministry of labour official, Miano Kariuki, has said.
Kariuki, from the state department for Labour and Skills Development’s National productivity and competitiveness centre said that through mainstreaming of the productivity management, Kenyans will get value for their taxes, with institutions coming up with productivity indices that will enable them tell whether their services were being appreciated.
He was talking to the media at the Siaya institute of technology in Siaya town when he led a team of government officials from several departments in sensitising public sector workers on productivity mainstreaming.
Flanked by officials from the salaries and remuneration commission and the cabinet affairs office, Miano said there was a possibility of a lot of wastage within the government which can be cured once the new style is embraced by the institutions.
“We could be having a lot of resources but there is a lot of wastage within the government and the essence of productivity management is to identify those wastages and address them with a view of aligning the resource utilization with the core mandate of the institutions,” he said.
He said that public servants in ministries, departments and agencies, as employees of the citizens, must always ask themselves whether they were delivering services efficiently.
Productivity management, he said, has several components, key among them being the extent to which the resources from the government and partners are being used and whether the citizens are getting the best out of the resources and how efficient is the system.
“In efficiency, we look at both operational and labour efficiency and the customer satisfaction,” he said.
Miano and his team had earlier paid a courtesy call on the Siaya county commissioner where they were received by deputy county commissioner, Robert Ng’etich.
By Philip Onyango
