Human Resources
South Africa experiences a brain drain that also affects the availability of qualified engineers in water and sanitation utilities. The number of civil engineers in municipalities has declined from 20 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1994 to 2.8 in 2009. One reason is the official policy of cadre deployment, whereby persons loyal to the ruling party, the African National Congress, are given jobs in different branches of government. This intransparent process puts party loyalty ahead of competence and demoralises public service employees, according to a 2012 study by the Human Sciences Research Council. Skilled staff are concentrated at the national and provincial levels, but there is a skills deficit at the municipal level. South Africa does not have a unified civil service, so that there are no uniform standards for hiring and promotion at the municipal level. According to the study, there is also a high level of turnover of middle and senior managers in the civil service, due to stressful working conditions and opportunities for qualified professionals in the private sector.
Read more about this topic: Water Supply And Sanitation In South Africa
Famous quotes containing the words human and/or resources:
“When we say “science” we can either mean any manipulation of the inventive and organizing power of the human intellect: or we can mean such an extremely different thing as the religion of science the vulgarized derivative from this pure activity manipulated by a sort of priestcraft into a great religious and political weapon.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness.... The expanses are so great that the little man hasn’t the resources to orient himself.... This is what I think about Russian suicides.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)