Public Service Capacity

The following exerpt from a call for bids in the Northern Cape got me thinking


what should we really expect from the English of Public Servants - can we really accept being

"..herewith invited to the supply of ... "

should we worry that they want

"..a broiler house typical to that of a poultry farm.."

or is that just being pedantic. But lets hope the same level of English is not used in the call otherwise we start to get difficulties in adjudication and in the contract otherwise...

But at a more significant level this is obviously the start of an attempt to create jobs with taxpayers (my) money by getting into the private sector. Lets hope at least they have an experienced business man (lets not train someone with no drive to be an entrepreneur) to run things. Otherwise it will go the way of many project, examples of which I can relate from experience:

• build something fancy but most often not approipriate
• put up the sign saying who did it
  
• get the minister to cut come and cut the ribon
• see it all on TV and the Good News site
• try, with out sufficient capacity, to get it to work
• forget about it - infact don't tell anyone what didn't work, which would be very useful
• go on to the next one

Then one level more what of the municipality - well they have obviously made a bunch of people happy finding a new name and developing a great logo (only excuse the quality it was a scan from the Sowetan) but does the poor work in publishing their call reflect their real capacity.

If you can't communicate how can you manage anything, let alone a municipality and what do you do with taxpayers money - interfere with the business men who really know how to manage and control. OK so they are not all supermen, but they are not using/loosing my money.

Its all very cynical, but what can we contructive can I do about it?