Work Tool Primarily

Commentary.

The installation of telephones in any public office is to facilitate communication between the officer and service users. It is an indispensable work tool especially in a digital age when people are not obliged to travel distances or waste hours and days to get information that would have been gotten easily with a simple dial of the number of the resource person.
Not only does it save time - which is money, but ensures efficiency as well. This explains why government invests hugely on the nearly irreplaceable work tool. Carefully setting quotas on which administrator and administration gets what amount per month or year is therefore telling of the importance government attaches to telephone in its daily functions.
What is however intriguing is the use some officers and friends make of the costly but vital tool. To say the least, many increasingly abuse the use of telephones in government officers. It is not uncommon to see people on phone in government offices for several hours discussing sometimes trivial issues. There are some users, who by virtue of their relations with an official who has a free telephone line, stroll into such offices at will and call as many people as their numbers can pass and as long as they can. Ask them why and the immediate response would be, “It’s a government property”, indirectly meaning that it is free and at the beck and call of whoever can access it. As many hold, it is a public utility that has to be used by all and sundry. Not far from the truth! But using it for everything than public service defeats the very essence of its existence.  The fact is that someone somewhere pays heavily for the misuse.
For instance, it is on record that in June 2009 alone, the State spent over FCFA 1.6 billion on telephone and at o...