[Music] the members of the namibian cabinet halt a two-day retreat from the 3rd to 4th december 2020. the purpose was to review progress in policy implementation and reaffirm a commitment to its transformation and results-based management the sessions were addressed by both local and international experts in governance we need a level of determination that comes from being focused and at the same time being able to distill these very processed very complex presentations into something that is tangible that you can go with all what we are talking to should be diversified through decentralization to these regions so that the masses in the regions are challenged to take ownership of all these flagship programs and program projects that we will be agreeing on the statistics shows there that our overall housing delivery compared to benchmark is very low the colleagues in the housing in the urban and rural development ministry have some comments why our delivery has been what we have seen not so long ago post the land conference in namibia and the resolutions that we made in that particular plan some of the proposals that he is making are actually already part of our text the reference fleetingly really of some of the work that has already been done in namibia and and i worry a little bit about um us constantly developing and i'm not saying uh prof that that is what we're doing with this particular retreat but i i would have wanted to see um us already taking stock before we came to this particular workshop it is this uh cross fertilization of different entities different ministries to enhance one let's say two or three priorities that makes a difference in a country and that's very much what the high level panel on the economy also identified the priorities are correct i believe but there is always this soft issue that hampers to implement these priorities and it is also what what um one person one person said there are rocky shores against which all these good proposals fail and i believe that tribalism and divisive policies are one of these very very serious impediments that we have no good answers for so i think more important for this dialogue is is really to agree and and discuss on how do we change and build on on what we already have we were also talking about our people to be outcome or action oriented and outcome oriented because when you look at things this seems to be one of the obstacles that we take those decisions but then there at implementation execution is where the challenge is cabinet retreat i call it and i was trying to refer to cabinet handbook so army was a civil servant everything maybe tomorrow he can touch but nobody started on that what do you mean by cabinet cabinet ministers other business people how are they going to be cheaters as cabinet minister what are the constraints so maybe we don't address that we are talking like we are talking to business people it looks like it so that one the other one is so i mean maybe tomorrow since you know both sides a businessman now successful one and was a foot soldier for the party then became a civil servant diplomats everything their debates continued into the second day with the identification of key policy objectives to be implemented as a matter of urgency while we have offices ministers and agencies governed under the public service act as i said in the beginning a number of other public institutions are governed under separate individual laws and this brings its own complications to improve performance and service delivery we have customer service charters first for the for the government and that charter is aligned to the africa public service charter and we also have public charters for individual offices ministries and agencies that ministries are required to display in a prominent place in order that the public has an understanding of what the commitments are and would therefore be able to hold us accountable in in that regard we also conduct citizen satisfaction survey in order to get feedback from the public in regard to how they assess our performance to complement our own self-assessment through performance management system a periodic review of certain policies which have been adopted in the public service and their impact on the public service when one looks at the cabinet handbook for example there's one sentence that reads as follows and i quote public servants are accountable to ministers what is the difference between public servants and civil servants president appoints the ministers to serve the public they depend on president to either promote them if they have to go somewhere else it's not true or to remove them that's what i'm trying to say but to save the public to save the people then the public service commission upon civil servants people who are civil nice people to save the public in a courteous way in an effective way but when two are not going to save the people the sovereigns they become public servants there are very strict guidelines through which an organization can communicate change effectively you can explore the change so explore what you want to change which is what you're doing here to hear it from the horse's mouth on the record not off the record so when you are in the news it means news by its very definition it's about new must be new must be in the public interest and it must be urgent from our side have tried to do what we could in terms of providing the policy and regulatory framework the facilities the infrastructures but i i sense a very big reluctance from the private sector to come on board i sense that lack of appreciation lack of understanding on how the private sector operates so there is a need for adjustment on the government side matches we put good policies that attract investments and protect investments and facilitate and all these things hpp2 will remain targeted and will continue with the focus areas that we address in hpp1 now the draft plan which was distributed as part of the pre-reading material only highlight the desired outcomes so we look forward to your input we speak about consolidation of social grants and the food bank considering the our economy's ability to further be loaded will our economy possibly be able to to to absorb another another another expenditure per month of 389 uh for everybody between the age of 18 and 59. we've identified private sector players who have about a billion dollars to to to deploy so the money is there um and this is between you know people like you know harris old mutual first capital one of the big things we need to get is to get confidence in our own people right in our own economy if we believe in our own narrative it's easy for the rest of the world to believe in our own story so somehow you ring the principles if you don't write our own story the other people will write the story for us