Governor Aminu Bello Masari of Katsina State has described some civil servants in the employment of the state government as ‘lazy’, a development which, according to the governor, made it inevitable for the administration to hire consultants for a number of jobs.
The governor spoke, on Wednesday, while swearing into office, Alhaji Idris Usman Tune as the new Head of Service for the state.
Tune replaced Alhaji Garba Sanda Mani who retired recently.
“We try to improve on the quality of civil servants so that we remove a lot of these consultancy businesses in the service,” Masari noted, and urged civil servants to update their knowledge through regular training and retraining.
According to Masari, “most of our senior civil servants have basic qualifications to go higher even to become more knowledgeable, but they have become lazy.
“Civil servants who refuse to update themselves through constant retraining slow down the process of governance in the state and they become occupationally lazy and fail to deliver and meet up with what is expected of them.
“Re-training through workshops, seminars and related avenues, enable civil servants to compete favourably at the national level.
“But really, what we found out is that it appears some sections of the civil service are not keen or interested, or have lost touch because lack of training or exposure makes someone lazy.
“Unless you do catch-up, how can you participate at the national level when you don’t improve yourself?”
He urged the new Head of Service to make training and retraining of civil servants a priority project, “as doing so will enable them to become competitive especially at the national level.”
