A New Frontier for the Sierra Leone Public Service
An address by His Excellency President Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma, delivered at Kent Village on the occasion of the launching of the Sierra Leone Public Service Academy on Friday 17 September, 2010.
My Fellow Sierra Leoneans, I stand on this piece of land to call your attention to our common cause to change the manner in which we conduct our business of Government, and to call your attention to the need of embedding the culture of self reliance in national development.
Our men and women who serve in the Police and the Military train to enter the armed forces. They train and re-train to serve in times of war and peace. We should adopt similar criteria and standards of training for our public servants to prepare them for good performance.
Our public servants were once trained to enter the business of service delivery for God and country; they were good, they were the best in our sub region. But the trend has changed over the years. Though we still have some wonderful public servants; we have collectively lost what it takes to meet today’s ever changing and ever demanding environment.
Today, we are faced with the choice of reclaiming our past glory and meeting the aspirations of our people for a better life. We owe it to this nation to reclaim the image of Sierra Leone as a country whose children were once the bastion of administration in the whole of English Speaking West Africa. We owe it to the struggling citizens whose taxes paid for our schooling and our present jobs to transform this country. But to do this, we must transform the public service; we must make it better than it has ever been before; we must create new frontiers of excellence, service, and commitment to serve the people of this country.
Now therefore, my fellow citizens, I today summon the attention of every Sierra Leonean at home and abroad to support and sustain our transformation through the establishment of a training center for our public servants –which we will call, the Sierra Leone Public Service Academy.
We take pride in the number of mineral resources we have in this country. But we should take greater pride in the human resources. We are establishing this Public Service Academy to build this greater pride in ourselves as Sierra Leoneans; enhance our expertise, and improve our capacity for knowledge based transformation of this land that we love. In establishing the Public Service Academy, we intend to make full use of our human resources and talents of the best and brightest, to serve our country than any mineral resources would ever provide us.
My fellow Sierra Leoneans, we have drawn the transformative roadmap; but we need trained agents and stewards to quicken the pace of our achievements. I am heartened when a few weeks ago, at a meeting with permanent secretaries at State House, I sensed a renewed commitment by public servants to live up to the promise of their profession. I have also perused The Ministerial and Administrative Declaration concluded this week at the Forum for Ministers and Senior Public Servants. I am heartened by the mutual commitments contained therein. The public service is ready to move on with the times, and we must acknowledge this renewed spirit of patriotic service. That is why I am declaring this day, September 17, as the National Day of the Public Service; a day of rededication by Public Servants to the ideals of service and excellence.
My resolve and yours should be to turn the corner and build a Public Service Academy that will endure for generations to come. I call on every Sierra Leonean today at home and abroad – to give me your support, your voice and contribution as insurance for our machinery of Government to move rapidly and efficiently towards Change and Progress.
To move this project ahead, I now ask the Sierra Leone Commercial Bank to assist me in opening an account for the Sierra Leone Public Service Academy, to which I will make a deposit. I expect every Sierra Leonean who has the means to contribute generously to the account.
I also call on my fellow citizens worldwide to join this self-reliance project. If you are a builder, a business man, a carpenter, a bricklayer, a mason, give your service to this Project. Whether you live at home or in the Diaspora, render your commitment to your country. Let us work with a single resolve, a single mind for this Project. When the Public Service Academy complex stands above these grounds in the near future, we shall congratulate each other for reclaiming our heritage of learning and seizing as our destiny as inscribed in the country’s motto: Unity, Freedom, Justice.
I thank you.
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