WHEN a public service sector in any of the advanced countries commits a mistake or is accused of substandard performance, an investigation will immediately be conducted into the incident and the wrongdoers will be punished. The head of the hierarchy in the concerned government department will resign as a way of shouldering responsibility. Of course, this is not the situation in the developing countries, including us. We will not argue that the performance of some of the government service-providing sectors in our country is less than adequate, if not weak. As a result of this weak performance, the employees and the senior officials are liable to make many mistakes. When a department makes a mistake, it will resort to an obsolete policy that we are sick of. This policy can easily be named, "putting the citizen under anesthesia until the case is closed". The mistaken government department will give us the impression that it is thoroughly investigating the case. It will form a committee to consider the issue and reveal the responsible employee but we will rarely or never see the results of its work. The officials or the employees who make these mistakes will not be punished so the mistakes will reoccur many times in the future. Of course top or lower officials resigning is not part of our culture. I do not want to single out a certain service sector but let us take for instance the supervisors of the social care homes. Most of the times they mistreat the occupants and the Ministry of Social Affairs will tell us that it is investigating the case. We never see any results of its investigations so the supervisors will continue their mistreatment of the poor occupants. The same scenario of forming committees and investigating the issue is used. We will never know the results of the investigation and will never know if a certain supervisor has ever been punished. If we conducted a real investigation to find out the culprits or why the violations were committed, they would never reoccur. The policy of putting the citizens under anesthesia when a mistake is committed has become not only obsolete but sickening. It will not serve the public interest or end the problems. Unless the wrongdoers are penalized and defamed, the performance of the service sectors in our country will continue to be weak.
