Ideas for Development: Solving Public Sector Absenteeism in Somalia

Empty Ministerial Offices. Photo by Adolfo Félix on Unsplash

Introduction

In the face of terrorist insurgency, Somalia’s governance capacity to rebuild state institutions is under constant threat. Unfortunately, recent revelations have highlighted a major issue that is compounding Somalia’s problems. Widespread absenteeism among civil servants triggered the latest round of controversy. A worrying trend indicates that almost 80% of the workforce are absent at times, known as ‘ghost workers’. In this article, I not only examine the causes of this issue, but also offer potential solutions.

Figure 1: FGS Civil Service Commission HR System (released by the Prime Minister).

Turning now to the analysis of the above snapshot, we can extract some important facts. Firstly, it’s clear that approved leave is just a small fraction of the overall absences. In fact, the gap is so significant that it can’t be attributed to seasonal fluctuations. Secondly, by turning the data into a donut chart visualisation, we can more easily grasp the magnitude of absenteeism.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
sns.set(font_scale=1.2)

def plot_multiple_donut_charts(file_name):
    # Set the figure size
    plt.figure(figsize=(8, 6))

    # Create the first…