An Assessment of the Personnel challenges in the Decentralised Service Delivery in Juba County, Central Equatoria State Government in South Sudan.

Abstract

LUJANG JOHN JANGALING (2010-M083-10025) An Assessment of the Personnel challenges in the Decentralised Service Delivery in Juba County, Central Equatoria State Government in South Sudan The study sought to assess the personnel challenges in the decentralised service delivery in Juba County. The study aimed to examine the personnel status in terms of experience, skills and training. It also focused in analysing the factors affecting the effectiveness of personnel; and made recommendations to improve personnel management in the decentralised delivery of services. The study design was descriptive and adopted both qualitative and quantitative techniques of data collection. It was carried out on two payams of Rejaf and Tijor and targeted 150 respondents. A total of 129 respondents participated in the study implying 86% response rate. The study established many factors affecting the effectiveness of the personnel. The study found that since 2005 to date Staff were inadequate in number and skills since most of them don‟t have qualifications and there were only few active personnel which hindered the decentralised service delivery. At the county level, there were many unclassified personnel with no experience, skills and competencies and there were only few trained personnel who were classified staff seconded from the state government to work for a time being in the county. The reasons as to why the majority were not qualified and skilful were because most of them are secondary school leavers and from Arabic speaking background and don‟t understand English well enough to enable them to deliver services effectively and efficiently. The study revealed factors like the threat of personnel and local authorities with guns from the former soldiers, the delay and no salaries, Vastness of the areas of operations of the local authorities, lack of documentations to run the services and lack of rule of law among others which affected the personnel effectiveness. The study recommended that in order to improve the quality of personnel, there is urgent need for the central government, state government and the County authorities to strengthen the lower administrative units (payam, boma) to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of personnel on performance goals. This will enhance the personnel‟s ability to know their job expectation thereby improving their service delivery. To enhance the personnel quantity, quality and accessibility, urgent action is required from the state government and the County local government to proportionately recruit personnel based on merit across the whole county. Similarly, there is urgent need to allocate personnel to perform duties for which they are qualified to give citizens the quality of service for which they pay taxes. The state ministry of local government needs to build the capacity of the local government administrative officers by organising regular workshops, seminars, ongoing training, provision of training modules and materials that cover a wide range of fields including financial management, planning, budgeting, good governance, project appraisal and management, human resource management. In that way, the problem of low skills may be minimised and so on. Key Words: Decentralised Service Delivery, South Sudan.