Speech Delivered by the MEC for Health and Social Development Mr. Seaparo Sekoati on the Occasion of Service Excellence Awards

Programme Director
Executive Major
Mayors of Different of Local Municipalities
Councillors
Traditional Leaders
Members of the hospital boards, pay point committees, clinic committees and many other social formations in partnership for service delivery.

We are now twelve years in our democracy and as government the people of this province continued to show confidence in us and therefore they deserve to receive high quality services.

The people of Limpopo like all South Africans have legitimate expectation to this public service delivery of acceptable standards. According to the 1997 White Paper on Transforming Public Service Delivery “public services are not a privilege in a civilized and democratic society; they are a legitimate expectation.”

In an effort to meet these legitimate expectations of our people government launched the Batho Pele campaign, thereby rejuvenating and re-orientating our public service focused on providing equitable, quality services to all South Africans.

This campaign has proved valuable because it has brought in transparency into service delivery and hence our people have received better and improved service compared to eleven year ago.

In an effort to drastically improve our performance government initiated new creative steps to remove remaining blockages to service delivery.

Among those initiatives is the recognition of best performing men and women through the Service Excellence Awards, the Khomanani Awards, the Vuna Awards and others that various departments initiated.

The Service Award is linked to our Performance Management System. The criteria used in selection and adjudication is guided by a policy to ensure that no favours are done to individual. The same guidelines used in selecting candidates are used in the Premier Service Excellence Awards. We also follow international standards and it for this reason that we can compete provincially, nationally and internationally.

We are proud to say we participate in the following Awards:

• Mpumelelo Awards
• United Nation Awards
• Alfred Nzo Awards
• Cecilia Makiwana Awards
• Community Builder Awards

We are therefore gathered here to celebrate those men and women in this district, who have worked beyond the call of duty, who stood up and never succumbed during trying moments.

History has once more provided us with the opportunity to honour the many heroes and heroines, often unsung, who are doing extra – ordinary and sterling work to provide a better life for our people.

These are the people who in the course of performing their duties have:

• Always upheld the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, the laws governing the public service and the Code of Conduct for the Public Service.
• Acted lawfully, reasonably and procedurally fair in accordance with Section 33(1) of the constitution and the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act, 2000.

It is this commitment and dedication that ordinary men and women of this department are displaying that is critical to the attainment of the goals of creating jobs and fighting poverty, combating crime and corruption and speeding up the delivery of basic services to our people.

It is our firm belief that the awards that we are conferring to these icons today are deserved and will encourage and inspire everybody to improve our levels of service and put people first

These are men and women who have demonstrated in their various capacities that they can go an extra mile in service delivery.

We commit ourselves to assist you to raise your levels of performance, both as individuals and teams, to reward excellent performance, like we are doing today. We will always give clear direction and leadership, recruit and promote on merit, retain and grow talented individuals.

However we will not tolerate any unbecoming behaviour as displayed by some of us in our interaction with the public and civil society.

We will punish poor performance and deal swiftly and decisively with misconduct and ill- discipline.

It must be understood that poor management of our service points cannot be tolerated. In the eyes of our people that which they get when they visit a clinic or a social security office is a mirror image of how government works.

What happens at head office is meaningless to them unless it contributes towards making their experience at service points better.

This does not mean that back offices must not improve on their work. In fact there is a clear relationship between what happens in the front offices and in the back offices.

So while we urge our frontline workers to improve we also expect swiftness in the areas of procurement, fleet management, records management, etc from the back office.

Failure to perform in these areas often compromises the ability to perform on the frontlines.

We are once more elated, that you have gone through the eye of the needle and achieved the best. In different capacities you continue to inspire us to work towards a better future through your purposeful and human actions.

To us you are ambassadors in service delivery. You are humanists who have understood not only the legacy of our past and the realities of the present, but also the kind of life the future should hold for our people.

You understood that we cannot be that which we need to become unless we do that which we need done and we congratulate you for that.

Through your work we are filled with pride, confidence and immense determination to overcome our problems.

We call on all of you to double your efforts and help those among you to do as you have done.

We take this opportunity to recognize all women achievers who are doing a sterling job in various fields. As we celebrated women’s month in August and excellent performance our hearts go to those women achievers, who, together with other women defied artificial barriers and made an indelible mark in the ongoing struggle to reaffirm and emancipate women.

We appeal to our social partners to respond positively to the challenges of creating a better South Africa.

We urge you to bring to our attention the needy children who live in your communities for help.

You must not allow children within your communities to sleep with empty stomachs while assistance could be sought in the department.

Many people with mental and physical disabilities remain outside social assistance network. We need to be informed of these cases so that we can respond accordingly.

Our officers, some of whom we are honouring today are always willing, in various capacities to help.

I thank you.