Bureaucrats-in-training

14 September 2007

Communication is difficult in this place. It can partly be blamed on a lack of great infrastructure. But mostly it can be blamed on the human factor.

News flies faster by word of mouth here than it does on the internet. Yet, how accurate is that news? It would make a great research topic.

A friend of mine here has been applying to become a civil servant for years. She has submitted countless applications with countless supporting documentation. Yet it seems there is never an end to it. What people need to submit in the application process seems to be forever in flux. In fact it seems to be passed down word of mouth from the national capital, much like the old game “telephone”. Because no matter how diligent they are to submit all the requirements they’ve been told to submit, inevitably there is always some other thing that wasn’t submitted that nullifies everybody’s application. Perhaps the local bureauocrats weren’t listening attentatively and failed to pass on the complete list?

The central government claims there is a teacher shortage. So it agrees to hire temporary teachers at ¼ the salary with the promise that after a year they can appy to be civil servants after which they will receive full salary. But the years roll by and they are still hanging, having submitted their “folios” several times. If one was conspiracy minded one might just begin to wonder if it wasn’t all deliberate to save the government some money, as these people struggle valiently on at ¼ salary ever hoping, and at their own expense filing application after application, having to even make their own copies of the application forms and the folders to store them in at their own personal expense. Every time there’s another announcement about submitting new applications they spend more time running around getting copies and signatures and standing in lines than they do teaching. The local provincial level of government is very adept at diverting funds from the central government.

Finally, after 5 years one friend has been told that several of them have been accepted and will have a 20-day training next month (which they must pay for – 8 months worth of the “temporary teacher” salary they have been scraping by with.) After the training, it is said they will receive their official letter. For another whopping fee no doubt.

This is how new bureauocrats are trained. Is it any wonder if they too seek to milk the system to recup their losses when they finally get accepted?