The Minister for Water Resources decided to conduct a surprise check on the Porvorim office of his department and found a few of the staff asleep at their desks and some others absent from the office without prior permission. He is a new minister and a new MLA too, having been elected for the first time to the Legislative Assembly, so perhaps his decision to conduct the surprise check came from past experience of having encountered sleeping government servants during visits as an ordinary citizen to a government department. Such surprises visits on departments by ministers have been conducted in the past, and have usually come when the government is still new and the minister wants to prove a point. 

Five years ago, then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who is now back at the helm, had paid such a surprise visit to the Mines Department and found two officers not in the office. This surprise visit too had been just days after he had taken charge of the State and the department. Surprise checks on departments come when a new government, a new minister, want to display their pro-people stance, but it hasn’t changed the way government officers in general deal with the people nor has there been any lasting positive outcome from the visits. The Chief Minister has now given government servants eight days to improve their 'conduct', failing which action will be taken. 

The government appears to be serious about its workforce, but are government servants in tune with what the elected representatives want?

The Goa Government workforce is a slumbering administrative giant, with over 55,000 employees at the service of the 15 lakh population of the State. When the VII Pay Commission recommendations had been implemented earlier this year, the hope was that there would be an improvement in the services. Last year, in October-November, while taking up the fight for the implementation of the VII Pay Commission recommendations, the Goa Government Employees Association (GGEA) had admitted that people are not happy with the ‘way government offices function in general’ but claimed that there are departments that are doing a ‘good job’. The Association President had actually gone on to say that government service is like ‘a vocation, an opportunity to serve the public’ and also spoken of the need to improve the quality of services rendered. 

Yes, there is need to improve the quality of services, but what the Minister for Water Resources found during his surprise visit places a large question mark on whether government servants see their job as a vocation or a vacation. It also gives little hope that there can be a change towards an improved quality of service from the employees.

Government servants have got what they demanded – an increased salary pay cheque as decided by the VII Pay Commission – Goa being among the first States to have implemented this, in the run-up to the elections. Now, can the new government at the helm and its ministers ensure that the output of the government employees in terms of work and service corresponds with the hiked salaries?

One way of making this happen would be more surprise visits to departments by ministers so as to keep the government workforce on its toes. In following a carrot and stick policy, the carrot in the form of the VII Pay Commission recommendations has been given and the stick would be the surprise visits and the Chief Minister's warning, but for there to be any major change in the manner in which government officials work, it has to come from among the officers themselves.

For the present, government officers will be a little wary of surprise visits in the coming days and weeks, but will this bring about a change in way they work, or only keep them alert to the sudden entry of a minister? If it’s the former, it means that the surprise checks and warnings have worked, if it’s the latter then it signifies that it hasn’t.