Why civil servants should wear uniform

 One reason why the civil service is so inefficient and not customer-centric is because officials occupy offices that they are not qualified for. This is especially true for high level officials such as permanent secretaries, directors etc. Most of these officers are political appointees. A political appointee does not have to be a card-carrying member of any political party; all they have to do is to consistently wear the colours of the ruling party. I don’t know if that practice continues even after the change of government from the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) to the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC). 

Under the BDP rule, even President Ian Khama kept a watch on peoples’ wardrobes! I find it hard to believe that his wardrobe monitoring only applied to politicians, and not to civil servants and the general public.

You see, the practice of civil servants identifying with the ruling party in dress code has a demoralizing effect on the real hardworking lot who believe in earning their positions through merit rather than boot-licking. The lazy laggards who only scrape through “soft” courses at tertiary and other institutions cheat their way to high office through such demeaning practices as dressing like their bosses do at political rallies, laughing the same way that their bosses do etc. Society can’t control how one laughs, but society can sure control how a civil servant should dress in order to look and hopefully serve, apolitically.

A uniform dress code needs to be introduced for civil servants, if it doesn’t already exist. The uniform should be as unlike the colours of political parties as possible. I can’t think of any reason why permanent secretaries, including the permanent secretary to the president, can’t wear simple Khaki attire to work, for example! This will boost the morale of real hard workers and expose the lazy, inefficient political hangers on.

Furthermore, civil servants should be barred from joining political parties, and those who already are members of political parties should be legally bound to give up their memberships before they can be employed in the civil service.


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