DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) – Samer al-Zein criticizes all the administrative reform projects by the Syrian government when he remembers his decision to return to his country to start a job.
The problem with al-Zein, who resides in Damascus after returning from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was not in the income difference, but rather how he has been looking for media work for more than eight years.
He said, when he got an opportunity, he had to submit to the orders of managements that had no practical or theoretical experience in media work, or to be unemployed again.
From his personal experience, which is always and often repeated in Syria, it is possible to imagine the great gap between the slogans posed about administrative reform and what is implemented on the ground.
Questions like these become the essence of the idea, “Does administrative reform need all these conferences, meetings and costs? Can conferences make any progress if the income level in Syria is 3,000 times less than the need?”
Also, “the positions are not awarded on the basis of experiences and competencies, but on security relations, favoritism, nepotism, and bribery, where they have become the only determinants of obtaining them.”
The essence of administrative reform is based on three points, “finding administrative structures for government institutions, placing a job description for employees, and modernizing administrative procedures,” a Damascus-based expert had previously told North Press.
He pointed out that since Ba’athists and influential individuals are running state institutions, an administrative reform conference held by the Syrian government will not contribute to solving the problems of corruption in Syrian institutions.
“We can notice the failure of the project through several main points, as implementing slow steps by the project implementers; for example, in preparing the staff in 2020, they relied on courses (preparing trainers) for some employees of public sector,” he added.
Followers of the issue of reform say, more than 10 years have passed since the slogan of administrative reform was raised, during which many conferences, seminars and lectures had been held.
The fun part is that the details of many of these activities are one of the corruption phenomena, as some have described, because they cost tens of millions and many of the corrupt participate, and their results are only zero.
Details and phases
Since the year 2000, the slogan of the reform has passed through different phases, and then began to be presented as a plan of action in June 2017, and the talk about it has become as a project described as a national project that is based on the aspirations of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to develop administrative performance.
The Ministry of Administrative Development was revived, after it was a non-sovereign ministry from 2000 to 2002, then it was frozen from that date until 2014, when a decree was issued in September 2014 to create the Ministry of Administrative Development.
Abdul Rahman Tishouri, an administrative expert, says in one of his published studies that the creation of the ministry was a great support for the issue of administrative development.
The Ministry of Administrative Development held many seminars, courses and lectures that talked about administrative reform, and began to interfere with the work of all ministries and set conditions for appointment in ministries.
But on the ground, nothing has changed. Rather, many decisions became the subject of resentment and criticism, such as determining the age of the deputy minister’s position, according to the administrator.
The latest activities of the ministry are holding a 10-day conference at the Conferences Palace in Damascus and it is still going on until now (from 20-30/6/2021).
On June 20, the work of the Administrative Reform Conference held by the Ministry of Administrative Development under the slogan “Effective Management towards Dynamic Institutions,” began at the Conferences Palace in Damascus and will continue until June 30.
Many state institutions, crews and cars go every day to spend hours following up on the details of the conference, and this is what some saw as a waste of time, fuel and meal costs.
Management specialists pointed out that all of the above to talk about administrative reform and detail in mechanisms and structures does not require conferences to be applied.
“Indeed, the matter begins on the right path when there is a real intention to reform, and this means starting with a minimum saying, putting the right person in the right place, and not according to favoritism, loyalties and the amount of bribes that are paid!” they added.
“Bubble”
Ayman Mulla, an engineer in a government institution in Latakia, told North Press that the first conference he attended in Damascus on administrative reform was in 2002.
“At the time, the project included that Syria would become Japan of the East after 6 years,” he added.
“This is not the issue, the issue is that after the end of the conference, the officials went and ate the fish and left the rest of us hungry,!” he referred sarcastically.
While another one described the conference as a “bubble,” saying that no party can “appoint an agile, expert and specialized manager in any field if it is not supported.”
He pointed out that there are “thousands of stories of people who have experience and integrity but were marginalized until they left the country, and there are millions of dollars spent on returnees, whom the country did not invest, so they preferred to leave as well.”
Old mentality
One of the participants in this conference from the private sector told North Press that the participants in this conference are qualified in using computers only.
He added that it is not possible to build a modern state with administrations, officials and managers with an “old mentality.”
Bassam al-Jaber (a pseudonym), an administrative expert from Aleppo, wondered if reform needed conferences? And that the project is still being traded as a term and not practically.
Four years have passed since the launch of the administrative reform project, “we find ourselves once again in the starting point of the project while the conference is scheduled to last for ten days,” he noted.
He believed that the most important step that must be carefully studied is “laying the foundations for developing administrative work through the system of desires and incentives, and removing all the causes that lead to defects and administrative corruption in all its forms.”
Raising wages
Al-Jaber pointed out that the most important reason that should be reconsidered is the issue of salaries and wages, which are a major cause of administrative imbalances with the absence of accountability and the growth of favoritism.
A businessman participating in the conference told North Press that any work needs incentives, whatever it was. The stimulus for commercial or industrial work and financial investment is profit, the motivator for marriage is a stable life, the stimulus for study is a higher salary and a better position, the stimulus for worship is heaven, and a stimulus business is salary, advancement, and promotions.
“There is no doubt that we need a very high administrative reform, but any conference that does not study the causes of delinquency (as it is said), will not achieve its purpose, and the causes of delinquency are low salary and the inability to secure a minimum decent life.”