Surprise Visits Are Not Public-Service Reform

Surprise Visits Are Not Public-Service Reform

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar September 2026

Fine. But why must a ministerial ambush be necessary for Government to discover that its own offices are failing the public?

That is the real question.

For years, citizens have complained about the same degrading experiences across government ministries and agencies: unanswered telephones, endless lines, missing files, staff who pass people from desk to desk, officers who appear indifferent, and citizens made to feel as if they are begging for a favor rather than seeking a public service they are entitled to receive.

None of this is new. None of it should require a surprise visit to uncover.

When a minister must personally turn up, unannounced, to confirm that an office is dysfunctional, it is not merely an indictment of frontline staff. It is a damning indictment of the Permanent Secretary, departmental heads, supervisors, internal reporting systems, and the wider machinery of public administration.

◊ Where are the performance reports?

◊  Where are the service-delivery targets?

◊ Where are the call-response records, queue-time data, complaint registers, file-tracking systems, staff evaluations, and independent audits?

◊  What exactly are senior managers monitoring every day if it takes a minister walking through the door to reveal that citizens are being ignored?

The much bragged about Digital Ecosystem

Government cannot boast about smart cities, digital transformation, modernization, and a safer, more efficient Guyana while managing public offices through a system of occasional surprise inspections. That is not modern management. It is reactionary supervision dressed up as decisive leadership.

A public service cannot be run on the assumption that employees will perform only when they fear that a minister may suddenly appear. That approach belongs to an old command-and-control culture—one too close to the “Massa Days” mentality Guyana should have left behind.

Unannounced visits have their place. They can expose problems that polished reports conceal. They can give decision-makers a direct view of how ordinary citizens are treated. They can also send a needed signal that public servants are accountable.

But they are not a substitute for institutional reform.

Guyana needs continuous, evidence-based oversight of public service delivery. Public-facing government offices should have properly governed monitoring systems, including video surveillance where appropriate, electronic queue management, recorded and audited call systems, file-tracking mechanisms, service standards, accessible complaint channels, and regular independent performance audits.

These measures must be implemented with clear privacy protections and rules against political misuse. The purpose is not to create a workplace police state. It is to protect citizens, identify recurring failures, reward competent workers, improve training, and ensure that supervisors cannot pretend that problems do not exist.

Taxpayers should not have to finance ministerial trips simply to establish whether staff are attending to the public. Ministers have policy portfolios to manage. Their time should not be consumed by discovering basic failures that competent managers ought to identify and correct daily.

If a department cannot tell its minister how many callers were answered, how long citizens waited, how many complaints were received, whether applications were processed on time, or which officers repeatedly failed the public, then that department is not being managed. It is being left to drift.

Editor’s Note: Accountability Cannot Stop at the Counter

The minister’s unannounced visit exposed more than poor customer service. It exposed the failure of a Government that has budgeted billions for ministries and agencies, financed staff training, purchased equipment, promoted digitalization, and repeatedly promised improved service delivery—yet still appears unable to ensure that ordinary citizens are treated efficiently and respectfully at the most basic point of contact.

The issue is not whether an employee was discourteous on one particular day, whether a phone rang unanswered, or whether citizens waited too long in one office. Those are the visible symptoms. The deeper disease is institutional failure.

Value for money is not a press release. It is not a budget speech, a ribbon-cutting exercise, a glossy report, or a ministerial visit arranged for public consumption. Value for money is reflected in results: calls answered, files located, applications processed, appointments kept, complaints resolved, citizens informed, and people treated with basic dignity.

If a minister can enter an office unannounced and discover dysfunction that has apparently escaped the attention of the ministry’s management, then the minister must not confine responsibility to the staff behind the counter. The Permanent Secretary must answer. Departmental heads must answer. Supervisors must answer. And the minister, as the political head with responsibility for the portfolio, must answer as well.

◊Who monitors service standards?

◊ Who receives and analyses complaints?

◊ Who checks attendance and productivity?

◊ Who reviews pending applications and delayed files?

◊ Who determines whether training has actually improved performance?

◊ Who evaluates whether money spent on technology has reduced waiting times and made services easier to access?

The same concern applies beyond a single office. Guyana has become accustomed to presidential and Cabinet outreaches where the country’s highest political officials are called upon to learn that a drain is blocked, a streetlight is broken, a road is deteriorating, or potholes have gone unattended. Citizens may welcome the intervention because it sometimes brings quick relief.

That is not a sign of strong governance. It is evidence of an administrative culture that is excessively top-down, reactive, and dependent on political intervention. A functioning State should not require the President to identify a blocked drain or a minister to discover that an office is failing to answer telephones.

The Government cannot credibly promote a “smart city,” modernization, technological transformation, or efficient public administration while relying on impromptu inspections and outreach tours as the principal tools for identifying routine failures. This is an asymmetry of governance: grand national ambitions at the top, but weak monitoring and poor execution where citizens actually encounter the State.

The minister’s visit was therefore useful—not because it revealed something extraordinary, but because it revealed what too many Guyanese already know. It also implicitly indicted the Government’s own management systems and the ministerial leadership responsible for ensuring that those systems work.

There should be consequences. Not theatrical reprimands for junior officers alone, but formal service-delivery reviews; public performance targets; audited complaint, call, and processing-time records; regular reports to Parliament; corrective deadlines for senior managers; and sanctions where negligence, incompetence, or chronic non-performance is established.

Ministers cannot take credit for budget allocations and new initiatives while disowning responsibility for the results. Permanent Secretaries cannot administer billions in public funds without being held accountable for whether their agencies deliver. Department heads cannot occupy positions of authority while routine dysfunction festers below them.

Until that happens, unannounced visits will remain what they are—brief moments of official discovery in a country where taxpayers have long been living with the consequences of Government’s failure to manage what it funds

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