’Marafaele Mohloboli
ALL Basotho Convention (ABC) youth league President, Tšoloane Maphasa, has warned under-performing principal secretaries that they will be sacked for failing to ensure efficient service delivery in line with the ruling party’s 2017 election manifesto.
Mr Maphasa’s warning comes barely a month after the Government Secretary, Moahloli Mphaka, accused some principal secretaries of focusing on tenders for personal enrichment instead of their core obligation of ensuring efficient service delivery to Basotho.
Mr Mphaka made the accusations against the backdrop of reports of serious infighting in ministries which have more than one principal secretary, resulting in battles of attrition to control and administer tender budgets.
Well-placed sources within the government recently told this publication that all was not well in some of the ministries which had more than one principal secretaries as they battled one another to be designated chief accounting officers of their respective ministries.
Such designations gives them control over tender processes and budgets of their ministries. While the principal secretaries are putting a public show of unity, sources say, in private, they are at each other’s throats over who should control their ministries’ purse strings.
Mr Mphaka, who rarely talks about controversies surrounding government tenders, recently told this publication that he was unhappy with the principal secretaries’ fight for control of the purse strings instead of focusing their energies on ensuring efficient service delivery by their ministries.
He said the co-principal secretaries were fighting to control their ministries’ finances so they could influence the awarding of tenders to highest bidders for their own selfish ends.
Mr Mphaka’s attacks on the principal secretaries were recently taken up and amplified by the ABC’s youth league boss, Mr Maphasa, who accused the top civil servants of performing below expectations.
In a recent interview with this publication, Mr Maphasa said the ABC youths would not stand idly by and watch the party lose support from the electorate due to the non-performance of principal secretaries who were appointed with a clear mandate to ensure efficient service delivery.
He said if they would soon be forced to approach ABC leader and Prime Minister Thomas Thabane to fire the errant principal secretaries.
He said before approaching Dr Thabane they would first march to the principal secretaries’ office and kick them out of their jobs.
“Our principal secretaries have their hands in their pockets and they are doing nothing when it comes to service delivery. The fact of the matter is most of our principal secretaries don’t seem not to know what their mandate is. They do not even report to the party (ABC) as they should be doing and this shows that they are not working or delivering as expected. Unfortunately most of them indulge in corrupt activities especially in the awarding of tenders.
“If our principal secretaries don’t change their way of doing things, we shall have no choice but to fire them. Once we have fired them, we will then approach the Prime Minister and tell him that we have fired them. We will do that very soon,” Mr Maphasa said.
Mr Maphasa made similar claims against the principal secretaries during last weekend’s ABC rally in Koro-koro. His claims were backed up at that rally Mr Sarele Sello- a famo musician popularly known as ‘Lehlanya’. Mr Sello is a well-known ABC activist who also worked as former Police and Public Safety minister ’Mampho Mokhele’s driver.
Speaking at the Koro-koro rally, Mr Sello said the shortcomings of ministers and principal secretaries reflected badly on Dr Thabane who had entrusted them with their top jobs.
“The leader (Dr Thabane) has appointed ministers and principal secretaries yet day and night his name is on everyone’s lips. Even his family and children have become a topic of discussion and this should stop. Enough is enough.
“If any of the principal secretaries feel they have been burdened with too much responsibility should just take their coats and leave. Such principal secretaries should pack and go home. They are killing Ntate Thabane,” an irate Mr Sello said.