He was speaking at the launch of the second phase of the public sector reform, which is to run from 2006 to 2011.
Guebuza said the first phase (from 2001 to 2006) had seen "significant advances", but he admitted that Mozambican citizens "still believe that a great deal needs to be done before they can feel properly served by those whom they pay out of their taxes".
In the second phase, he continued, "activities already started shall be deepened, and a public administration built that stresses the citizen and the production of measurable results".
"We want to strengthen the conditions for a more fruitful relationship between civil servants, citizens and all our partners who are giving the best of themselves so that poverty is forced onto the retreat, and eventually passes into history", said the President.
Phase two of the reform takes as its priorities improving state services, strengthening local state bodies, particularly in the districts, professionalising the civil service, and ensuring good governance. The latter, Guebuza said, meant laying the stress "on open and inclusive governance, and fighting the obstacles to our development, such as red tape, the spirit of apathy and drift, and corruption".
Guebuza believed that most civil servants "have worked selflessly, and have understood their responsibility to change for the better".
Many "work under difficult conditions, but do not give up.
They show empathy for the difficulties of the citizens who seek their services, and do their best to help them".
He wanted these honest civil servants "to become more active in the fight against practices fomented by a minority of their colleagues that are contrary to the values and principles cultivated in our public administration".
Once again, Guebuza compared today's struggle against poverty with the battle waged to free Mozambique from Portuguese colonial rule. In the war for independence, "we won because we successfully rescued our self esteem and called upon our self- confidence", he said. "We won because we persisted, transforming difficulties into challenges and challenges into opportunities to reveal new talents and virtues".
The same attitude, he concluded, was required now to force "paradigmatic changes that will induce the flowering of new behaviour and attitudes among civil servants to their work and to the public".
SOURCE: AIM
