Seye Joseph
With the business of government moving beyond just provision of essential basic amenities for the publics, Lagos state government has moved up its game in the system of providing efficient and qualitative service to its citizens.
The initiative that encourages continuous improvement in service delivery by promoting transparency, accountability and responsiveness and allows citizens to get involved in setting and monitoring service delivery, and to demand service standards are met. By making citizens more aware of what services the government provides, how they are provided and how well they perform, the policy challenges civil government staff to deliver quality services.
Speaking during the press briefing, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Tourism Arts and Culture Ashimi Adewale said in his speech that the Lagos State Government in its Mega City vision introduced the concept of service charter for its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to improve on their interface with customers, raising the quality of professionalism, efficiency, courtesy for excellent public service delivery that meets international standard.
He described the initiative as a contract between an agency and its public that is consumers for its services.
According to Adewale, “It specifies the services being rendered which must be conspicuously displayed or communicated to Customers, quality of services that customers should expect, complaints mechanisms should there be non-satisfaction by customer.”
He identified respectfulness, courteousness and helpfulness, cooperation, sincerity/ honesty, willingness to accept responsibility as major attitudes crucial for using service charter to achieve probity, accountability and transparency.
“The perception of workers on the public service has a great influence on their attitude to service delivery and workers who perceive their jobs in terms of power will have a different attitude to service delivery than workers who see their jobs as service to humanity.
Adewale mentioned promotion of trust, promotion of good governance, feeling of ownership by citizens, cooperation between citizens and government, responsiveness to the needs of citizens, improvement in standard of living as the benefits the program will bring to the state.
PERMANENT SECRETARY
The policy
The Lagos State Government in realisation of the need to ensure that its Public Service can deliver customer friendly service for the realisation of its Mega City Vision has introduced the concept of Service Charter for its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to improve on their interface with customers, raising the quality of professionalism, efficiency, courtesy for excellent public service delivery that meets international standard.
