1) Procurement: GRZ is among the biggest buyers of goods & services. Civil servants control procurement. You've to dance to their music or never get the contract. You've to butter them to get contracts. If you play smart, you're the loser. If you've done any business with GRZ, you've an idea the procurement blues existing to get a tender. Some civil servants are experts is 'selling tenders'. They sell to the highest bidder. They can even help you win the tender. They are movers & shakers.
2) Payment: You can win the tender, supply the goods or render the service. But another gatekeeper civil servant comes in here: accountants. These pay masters can make your life hell if you don't dance their Michael Jackson music of oiling them to quicken payment. Those who know the Jackson steps get their payment in no time. But poor dancers go for months without seeing their pay. By the time they get it, the monetary value of the contract would have been eroded. Most businesses are caught up in this systematic corruption & bend.
3) Time wasting: If you know time wasters on earth, civil servants can top the list. "Come tomorrow" takes forever. Kaya which part of tomorrow is in their vocabulary. You will know Jesus when dealing with these people. They look for opportunities in these delaying tactics. Businesses don't have time for these merry-go-round gimmicks of civil servants. They end up learning the dancing steps for the civil service. Whereas "time is money" in the business world, to the civil service, that's your business. They do it at their pace.
4) Cuts: The civil service is littered with "cuts" [ncekelako] almost everywhere you pass to do business with GRZ. Even security guard will want a cut to open the gate. These people are powerful. They can determine the sustaibility & death of your business. We need sanity. Sanity in civil service business conduct can largely reduce cost of doing business & growth of many businesses. Fair play rules & efficiency in doing business needs to be core in the civil service for entrepreneurs to get a return on investment (RoI).
WHAT happens when caught up in this civil service net?
5) Inflate price: Businesses end up pushing the price upwards to meet these civil servants "cuttings" littered in the whole value chain. You factor-in amounts to oil everyone in the value chain. This comes at additional cost to GRZ. A tractor costing K200, 000 can be pushed to K400, 000 to meet the oiling needs of supply value chain beneficiaries. When ACC says it will sit in every procurement committee, this is what it seeks to address.
6) Compromise quality: some businesses go for the most substandard materials to meet the cost of supplying GRZ so that they also meet the oiling needs of the system. No business owner would deliberately supply low standards goods/service. It is system blues pushing them to do so. The useless bridges, equipment, infrastructure & others we see GRZ paying for comes from complex GRZ systems that need oiling to get thinking moving. "wacenjeza ng'anga ukalibe kupole" (you've alerted the healer b4 getting healed) follows you when you refuce to oil the system.
7) Stick to principles & be the loser: Your business can fold easily when you dare the civil servants. You can get:
i) arrested for corrupt practices with them, ii) banned from public supply by ZPPA for poor service service/ horrible goods or iii) smoked out of business. Being among the biggest buyers & sellers, GRZ needs to sanitize its systems for every entrepreneur to effectively do business with diff GRZ agents/departments. Arm twisting, blackmailing (never to get another GRZ contract], ect tricks by civil servants is ruining many businesses.
WHATEVER magic GRZ needs to apply, it has to bring sanity to its systems. It needs to attitude change among its system. The business world is failing to create jobs to meet the oiling needs of those entrusted with public office. Business is hard, it needs support systems. Every coin counts in the business world. When the support system is siphoning money meant for business growth/expansion, jobs & wealth vanish in the process. No matter how good GRZ policies to support businesses can be, without a good support system; it will be all in VAIN.
