The Editor, Sir:

All over the world, and particularly in big cities, the collection of solid waste is difficult to manage, and this requires a distinctive approach to management. In our own circumstance, we have seen where the traditional qualifications and skills have not worked in many instances because our solid waste management organisation has been plagued by rapid management turnover and a series of corruptions.

Many people feel that the problems largely stems from the fact that garbage collection is too politically-sensitive, and there has been too much political interference in the administration of the organisation.

Mrs. Joan Gordon-Webley's appointment to head the public cleansing agency was not done via the process of open applications and interviews etc, but her appointment should not be faulted for lack of traditional academic or professional quali-fications, but should instead focus on her history of performances, organisational skills and ability to deal with various factions competing for scarce resources.

Performance tools

We must support high academic and professional achievement, but these are not to be ends in themselves, but tools to achieve better perfor-mance in the delivery of services to the public and we believe the public sector has largely missed this important message. It has many of the most qualified persons yet performance and productivity have been chronically low. It appears that a culture has developed either mistakenly to confuse or substitute higher qualifications for performance. In many instances this is taken to the ridiculous extent where officers with higher qualifications are expected to do little more than attend meetings. In fact, it sometimes seems that if you are not in a meeting you are not very important in the scheme of things and their secretaries and associates take infinite pride in insisting that so-and-so is, always it appears, in a meeting, even if you call ten times per day. All these flaws would not be so obvious if the officers were focused on performance and satisfying customers (the public). Most unfortunately, these worse practices are at the highest levels of the organisation, and are therefore filtered down as the norm for the rest to follow.

Mandate

The public is fast becoming disenchanted with the public sector which gives the impression that apart from collecting taxes and arbitrary fees, it is becoming less concerned with the delivery of services and good performance as is its mandate. The pity is that the country is paying an enor-mous price for this non-service and dismal performance and is robbing us of the progress we should be achieving com-parable to other nations.

We all go to the same tertiary institutions, read the same textbooks, and are sometimes even brighter than our private sector or overseas counterparts, yet our public sector perfor-mance remain so dismally low.

Public sector managers are always emphasising more training and bigger staff compliments and hardly ever better performances.

I am, etc.,

L.A. BERT RAMSAY

P.O Box 760. Kingston