Passing the buck

The greatest disadvantage of a public service is the time comfort it unknowingly affords to some of its bottom-line operatives. Since it is not fair to expect every minor thing to be controlled or coordinated from above, it is natural then that some of the details are left to bottom line operatives. However, in discharging their responsibilities, some weak elements of a bureaucracy take advantage of public time to suit their own purposes.
Those at the top, most of the time expect that their employees down the ladder be in time at their work places and to serve the public diligently. What happens in some cases however is that customers become more efficient than the functionaries themselves. This is particularly true in some of the public and private service giving institutions. If the official time of work in the morning starts at 08:30, it is the customers that are punctual rather than some of the operatives. The operatives only come well after 09:00 a.m. with all the apologies and reasons on earth. This is a contradiction to what is expected by the upper bodies of administration, or could it be an irony of a desirable practice?
The second disadvantage of public service is the laziness window it sometimes avails unwillingly to its operatives. The leaders of such offices are chiefly conscientious people full of diligence and respect for their organizations and customers. However, in some of these administrations some of the bottom-line operatives have the love of delaying simple administrative matters by giving all sorts of excuses from health failure to the inefficiency of their fellow workers. If acustomer’s document disappears, they blame the fault on the next person.
This sort of pushing off responsibility to the next person is not exceptional to a particular place. An instance of this is observable anywhere including resort areas where customers are traditionally respected in the Ethiopian setting. If customers find filthy lavatories, just next to beautiful bars, like the one of Langano Wabi Shebele Resort mess, and ask the person around why it is left in such a condition, one is told that the janitors are gone for breakfast. So the story of passing the blame onto someone else is too evident.
On the other hand, they sometimes blame procedures for their own inefficiency or laziness. Whenever customers go to complain against some anomalies prevalent in the society or in some neighborhood, they start to blame the whole issue on existing procedures that prevent them from taking effective and immediate actions. The question is how true is such an allegation?
Clear cases in point are a plenty in some places where failures to discharge responsibility is pushed from person to person. On the other hand, there are cases of course, where some members of a community become accomplices to such social abuse. One instance of this is seen in Kebele 03/05 (formerly Keftegna 17, Kebele 19) where the lack of cooperation in the part of a house lesser and lessee has aggravated a situation, in spite of the wonderful and continued efforts of the leaders of Kebele 03/05 and the environmental bureau of Bole sub-city. This is the case of the so far unresolved issue of the coffee roasting and food preparation store of “Yeshi-Buna”, (also known by the name of ‘Alem Des’) that has caused problems to the neighborhood. The unbecoming smoke that comes out of the establishment not only has evicted out a well-paying occupant of a neighboring house but has also become a health hazard by causing asthmatic conditions among residents. What is more frustrating is the inability of the next house to cope up with the flock of rodent mice, careers of rabbis, that flood-over from the same coffee and food preparation store over the common wall.
How long yet, should it be dismissed as irrelevant without stern intervention of the sub-city or a body above it as if there is no by-law under which it has to be properly resolved?
I think it is high time that blaming everything on government policies stop at once. On the other hand, personality predominance should not smear the right of people in the name of investment, to live in good neighborliness as people have different and respectable trades without which investment has no significance. However, service operatives have more roles and responsibilities to ensure the convenience of their customers. They are there to serve the public effectively and honestly to the end. If we are citizens that truly have the interest to advance our society, we should be part of the implementation machinery and process to insure our rights and obligations in the system without any prejudice.
Yes, shirking responsibility by blaming naively one’s weaknesses and inefficiencies on government policies or the next person, as well as the arrogance of some individuals in not respecting societal values, will not help to move an inch our national cause forward, nor will it yield healthy fruit. Yet, public grievances most often than not are hatched at the bottom of the operative lines, and it is as of now that one has to start cleaning some of the dirty grounds in the preparation of the millennium’s onerous tasks of nation building. After all, the discharge of responsibility should be carried out to the last, and any attempts to procrastinate customers’ affairs should be done with. It should not be taken as a built-in tradition.