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

Date: 29 September 2006
Venue: Tukakgomo Sports Ground, Sekhukhuni District

Programme Director
Kgoshi Nkosi Executive Mayor: Cllr. Masemola Mayor of Tubatse Municipality: Cllr. Mammekwa Councillors Traditional Leaders Members of the hospital boards, pay point committees, clinic committees and other social formations in partnership for service delivery.
Government Officials

Today the 29th September marks the last of the five District Service Excellence Awards events for 2006 in our department. We are today converged here in the Sekhukhuni district, which we are all aware it is one of the presidential nodal points. It is so precisely because of the underdevelopment resulting from many decades of systematic marginalization and creation sustained cheap labour reservoir. Hence even today we this district has the highest illiterate rate of unemployment and poverty, yet one of the richest in mineral resources.

We have said as government that twelve years after defeating apartheid, our biggest enemy is poverty and unemployment. All our energies and minds need to have clear focus of the challenges at hand. Whatever we do at every level of our responsibility should be geared towards the task at hand.

Our own contribution as a department is in the field of health and social development. Our responsibility is to ensure that we provide sustainable health care and high quality social development services in a province that is predominantly rural. Having understood our environment, we develop various strategies as to how do we achieve this objective.

One amongst strategies developed is in the area of human resources development which is very critical and key in us achieving our noble goal of health for all and sustainable development of our communities. We all know that the nature of our task is labour intensive. For us to succeed in these fundamental services, we need skilled, committed, honest and dedicated women and men.

Having realized that the national human resources strategy for health was launched in April 2006, which aims to deal with the chronic shortage of skilled health professionals in our country. It is through our experience that we now know that the hardest hit by this chronic shortage are the majority of the poor staying in rural areas. As result our own health professionals, who are reluctant or even refuse to work in our rural service points even those who were born and bred in these areas.

Government developed incentives to attract and retain these needed skills, however not much has this assisted us. As a rural province and in particular Sekhukhuni district, continue to experience major challenges in these regard.

On the one hand we continue to have marginalization of poor and vulnerable groups in accessing social development services again this can be directed to the same factors of human resources compounded by values and morals in our own establishment.

For us to overcome some of the major challenges, we require leaders, women and men who are dedicated. Leaders who will have real positive and constructive influence on the teams and those leaders need to be guided by lofty ideas, and deeply devoted to the responsibilities they shouldering.

We are talking of officials who must always have clean reputation with our communities. Our values as a department talk of honesty and integrity that we need to uphold as civil servants. What we do not want is self-serving and self-centered civil servants who are only concerned about themselves and care less about the communities they are supposed to be serving.

Our communities need to always feel our sincerity and honesty. We need to understand that hypocrisy cannot be hidden; therefore we need to do everything in our power to avoid this situation. Our people cannot be deceived and once they discover this hypocrisy they will loose faith in the services that we offer. We must cultivate these qualities in us to make it easier for us to work and execute the tasks before us. We are making a special appeal to those professionals and workers to leave cross-boundary politics to the politicians and continue provided health and social development services to the communities.

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.

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. 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 each one of us 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 challenges facing us. We call on all of you to double your efforts and help those among you to do as you have done.

We appeal to our social partners, NGOs, FBO, CBOs and Coperate Citizens to respond positively to the challenges of creating a better South Africa. It is our responsibility for all of us to bring to our attention the needy children who live in your communities for help. We cannot afford to turn a blind eye on the plight of those orphans, the sick and vulnerable. We need to ask ourselves what kind of a future society are we building that allow its children to go to bed on hungry stomachs, to walk barefooted and naked in winter, to die of diseases that could be prevented.

Many people with mental and physical disabilities remain outside social assistance network. We need to afford these people the human dignity, love and respect that they deserve. Our officers, some of whom we are honouring today are always willing, in various capacities to help. Let us all strive to give meaning to our freedom and live up to the expectation of our people. Together we can make it.

I thank you.