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Comment & analysis
If Government was a restaurant
Rakesh Rajani
2007-08-08, Issue 316
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/42963
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Once upon a time there was a country which had only one restaurant. All the people in that country had to eat in that restaurant, so thousands went there every day.
But the service was a bit of a problem. People who were hungry had to wait for hours, and in some cases even days. There did not seem to be an order to things. Some people who arrived late got service quicker, a few others got particularly big plates of food, but most suffered more or less silently.
They did not dare to ask questions of the waiters or managers. Experience showed that it did not help. Those who had asked in the past had been told ‘be patient’, ‘don’t you see I am busy’, ‘come back tomorrow’ or ‘we have lost your order’. Others were told ‘come back tomorrow’ or ‘who are you anyway?’ The customers paid ‘a little something’ to expedite the order, or waited, take your pick.
When the food did arrive, often it wasn’t very good. It wasn’t very balanced or healthy, at times it wasn’t clean, and usually it wasn’t enough—especially in the second half of the month because the restaurant had ‘run out of supplies’. You had to pay anyway, though some waiters charged a little less if you agreed not to demand a receipt, right underneath posters exclaiming ‘this is a corruption free zone’.
One day the restaurant owner passed by, and became quite alarmed. He called a meeting of all the managers and told them things had to change. The managers were to remember that ‘customers were king and queen’. Service had to improve, and there was to be more accountability. New rules were issued, including a code of ethics for managers, a manual for waiters. There was even a ‘client service charter’, that explained the restaurant values and its obligations to customers, though most of the customers never got to see it.
Afterwards, there was some difference. Several managers worked really hard to make their part better organized than before. Some of the waiters were more alert and kind to customers, though they could do little about delays in the kitchen or the mosquitoes. But for many others it was business as usual. Another problem was that a lot of the managers and a few waiters always seemed to be away for capacity building seminars. They would come back with lots of files and papers on improving restaurant services, but kept the little brown envelopes for themselves.
The funny thing was that it did not seem to matter if you treated the customers well or did your job right. The incompetent and uncaring staff always got their salaries, and were not held accountable. The hard working ones got the same as the rest, and no special recognition. If anything, the other staff ridiculed them, saying ‘you think you are better than us’, ‘you think you are smarter’, etc… and so after a while even they stopped taking initiative, asking questions or going out of their way to make the restaurant work better.
The newspapers kept reporting about the continued problems at the restaurant, so everyone was aware. This time a team of expert consultants was hired, with funding from donors. They interviewed a lot of the customers and managers and wrote large reports. A strategy was developed with a Swahili name to show it was locally owned – MKUKUHUMGA (Mkakati wa Kuboresha Uwajibikaji na Huduma za Mgahawa) More capacity building seminars were done. Managers went abroad on exchange visits. Codes of ethics, manuals and client service charters were all updated.
But life for most of the restaurant customers did not improve. The food was mostly poor and the service bad. And despite all the tough talk about accountability, the rules were rarely enforced. The reality was that it did not matter whether the managers or waiters did their job or not. There appeared to be no consequences; at most a few of the really bad ones were transferred.
All this puzzled the frogs, who lived at the edge of the restaurant, immensely. “Instead of all the rules, guidelines and seminars”, observed one frog, “why don’t they just get their incentives right – reward those who do well and sanction those who don’t?” “Moreover,” quipped another frog, “and why not give power to the customers to hold the staff accountable?”
* Rakesh Rajani is the executive director at HakiElimu (http://www.hakielimu.org/)
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/
Readers' Comments
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Mr. Rajani is a brilliant writer and policy leader. It is too bad ministers in Tanzania choose to threaten and cajole Mr. Rajani rather than seek to cooperate with him.
max percy
When I first read the article I thought, well, maybe the author should also write 'If NGOs were a restaurant.' Why? Because it is quite possible that the very same governments we tend to criticize/critique will collapse as soon as some of the highly bureaucratic and undemocratic NGOs replace them!
Anyway, I am happy that somehow the author read my mind and came out with 'If NGOs were a newspaper'and maybe it will be a good idea if he post it here even if it is just for the sake of balance. I have a feeling that the 'G' in the NGO makes NGOs rely heavily on the government for their identity and self-validation. As a result NGOs tend to end up replicating what the governments do instead of coming up with better, viable alternatives.
In some instances, NGOs governance structures are centralized and unrepresentative than those of governments.In other cases, the NGO version f the 'executive' has more powers to overide the decisions or vision of its 'legislature' or 'judiciary' at the expense of the will of its immediate constituents. In extreme cases, it side with donors' demands and sideline members' mission.
It also always surprise me how much NGOs can be part and parcel of the governments in many of those areas in which they are supposed to engage critically. No wonder a rich NGO can fund a government to do such and such a thing yet expect to able to question the same government when it does this or that!Can an NGO be happily here, there and everywhere in governmental circles without compromising its non-governmental identity? Maybe its high time that we also rethink 'If NGOs were a Government.'
Chambi Chachage, Independent Researcher and Policy Analyst
The story is true for some government leaders. It is more than true for hakielimu CSO under the leadership of rakesh rajani. Since 2002,the CSO has been having ernomous HR problems, it has done several retreats, engaged consultants to look at OD and two evaluations internal and external have looked at these problems, huge sums of money have been paid on this issue yet the executive director never bulged if anything he exercised more control including reading all emails of employees. The turnover rate at Hakielimu is one of the highest ever, staff are scared to death of the ED. I wish that what we do not want the government to do, CSOs are not permitted to do as well.
verdiana masanja
My first reaction: what about opening another restaurant, or another 10 restaurants?
Competition is the best way to become competent. Monopoly, on the contrary, has always been the way to force a lousy service upon every customer.
We should have governments in competition for supplying services. And the customer should have the choice of paying only the one (or the ones) which supplies/supply the best service at the best price. This is called panarchy.
Gian Piero de Bellis