Lately the head of the civil service introduced a number of services and information related to government departments available from our mobile phones, which is certainly commendable. On the other hand the interview with the Auditor General and his deputy, (The Sunday Times of Malta, April 2), do not suggest that all is well within the civil service.

I could not believe what I was reading. Here are some extracts from the interview:

“A nightmare”; “happy go lucky”; “people at different levels not wanting to shoulder responsibility”; “the laissez-faire attitude”; “civil servants wash their hands of decisions - yes it exists”; “in government departments, we often witness lack of controls on sick and va­cation leave”; “lack of minutes, documentation, proper record keeping or incomplete paper trails”; “we have had audits/ investigations where finding any of documentation was next to impossible”;

“Why is certain information, so important to good decision-making not being compiled or retained?”; “unfortunately, depart­ments still tend to rely mostly on word of mouth”; “when it comes to the back-end administrations, we still have big deficiencies”; “a decision which involved a court case for thousands of euros, and yet we could not establish who gave the order”;

“We tend to have a very lax attitude towards accountabi­lity”; “supervisory management is somehow reluctant to take disciplinary action”; “in some cases the assets can be worth thousands and millions of euros, but most departments just consider the stock-taking of assets an inconve­nient yearly exercise”.

Honestly, I expected the Prime Minister to deliver a statement in Parliament in reaction to the interview, followed by questions by the Leader of the Opposition.

Despite the above quotes I still trust the majority of underpaid civil servants in shouldering their responsibilities and behaving with honesty.

On the other hand, may I ask whether all these quotes are politically motivated?