Governance and Human Resources experts have backed the government’s decision to start hiring District Council administrators on a fixed contract basis. They say the move will improve service delivery and propel professionalism.
The development was announced by the Local Government Minister Ben Phiri during a series of town and council meetings that he recently conducted across the country.
The Minister’s position follows concerns of poor service delivery in the councils, especially among permanent employees.
He noted that the majority of such employees are frequently absent without valid reasons and often report late for work.
Weighing in on his views, a Human Resources expert, Bright Limani, has described the decision as a step in the right direction.
He said that the government is now shifting from a traditional way of doing things to a new public management system, which stipulates that government should be run as a business.
Limani noted that officers running the councils on a contract basis will be working hard with set targets to achieve. He said this will, in the long run, result in improved service delivery and high levels of professionalism in the civil service.
“Quite often, service seekers complain about how services are offered in the civil service and how professionals behave, it is because these officers take their work for granted in government,” said Limani.
Commenting on the development, Publicity Secretary for the Political Scientists Association of Malawi, Mavuto Bamusi, said the move is a welcome development, noting that the civil service has always operated with a laissez-faire approach, saying people work without showing results based on their performance.
Bamusi noted that the new approach by the government is in line with the new public administration, where workers within the local governance system must show results on the work they do, such that their continued existence as public servants should be result-driven.
“This will also help to give the taxpayers value for money because all the civil servants are paid by the taxpayers, and they should be confident that the money they give out to the government through taxes is giving back value in the form of results,” said Bamusi.
Additionally, Bamusi observed that the approach towards contract-based management will help to harness the development potential that is lying idle in the districts.
“And for Malawi to develop in line with Malawi 2063, this is the right approach and the Ministry of Local Government needs to be commended for initiating this process”.
The development comes a few weeks after the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Ben Phiri, issued a directive that every civil servant should be residing within the council where they are working.
According to Phiri, the directive will help improve the efficiency of service delivery in all councils, as it will cut off traveling time that civil servants—residing outside their duty station—spend.
And through a series of town and district council engagements, the Minister of Local Government has been challenging councils across the country on their capacity to effectively absorb the K5 billion Constituency Development Fund (CDF) that the government will be disbursing annually, starting from the 2026/2027 Fiscal Year.
