?When the overall vision is absent: expanding the civil service or empowering the private sector Dr. Ali Mohammed Osman Al-Iraqi

?When the overall vision is absent: expanding the civil service or empowering the private sector
Dr. Ali Mohammed Osman Al-Iraqi
The Secretary-General's comments to the National Civil Service Commission (NSC) indicated that the Commission intends to enforce the Seventh National Project after approving 25,000 jobs. While paying tribute to the efforts of the Commission during the recent period, but we need to pause here to examine these actions and the extent of their relationship and consistency with the overall philosophy of the economic system in the country.
It is noted that the institutions of the modern state established by the colonizer at the beginning of the twentieth century have witnessed a steady expansion in the roles of the public sector, and this is not limited to the function of providing services to citizens and sovereign works, but also to the productive jobs established factories and public sector companies that absorbed a significant number of employees and technicians. National Governments continued to follow the colonial pattern until the government launched the economic liberalization program in the early 1990s.
Economic liberalization, a copy of Washington's consensus, aimed to dispose of public sector facilities through so-called privatization and opening the door to private sector leadership. The program has achieved successes and suffered failures that are not addressed.
Dear reader, that the overall vision is to reduce the role of the public sector and the civil service to the minimum, if this is also the expansion of absorption in the civil service and the tools and disability What is it? Is the problem is the number or low efficiency? Will this number (25,000 employees) be accommodated in federal facilities in Khartoum or the states? Are these projects part of a national strategy to tackle unemployment?
Someone might say how to call for a development state and demand a reduction of the civil service? , And I want that the development state does not mean never inflation of the public sector and the civil service, but on the contrary it is aimed at efficiency and effectiveness, not number and without the experience of Japan and other countries that followed this path.
This trend, the expansion of the civil service, reflects one of the contradictions that distort the management of economic affairs and lead it in ways that lead only to mirages, simply because that is what we have said. We are entitled to question the degree to which the civil service contributes to solving the problem of unemployment, which is close to 20% in a country where more than half of its population is young. What is the first interest in expanding the civil service or empowering the private sector?
There is no doubt that this phenomenon, the expansion of the government, with declared procedures for economic liberalization is not exclusive to Sudan. Many developing countries that have taken the path of structural adjustment have been praying and singing; they raise subsidies and reduce spending on education and health while increasing spending Government. This is a real crisis not in resources and budgets but in perceptions and paradigms. Without reviewing these mentalities and correcting the tracks, neither investments nor growth rates will benefit us because we will simply continue to pressure the citizen and the private sector to feed them the public sector and the civil service.
The exit from these successive crises requires a different perspective and beyond what was our fathers. The priority is to design a national plan for the treatment of unemployment, which opens the doors and overcome the obstacles to the private sector and enable it to perform its roles effectively. To ensure oversight and accountability, it is necessary to support civil society organizations that monitor And monitor the deviations and look at advocacy campaigns and awareness of the citizen is the beneficiary and producer and observer.
Quoting the newspaper Elaph