A culture of entitlement, corruption, lack of professional ethics as well as the capacity to deal with disciplinary cases, is hampering government's principle aim of first-rate service delivery.

Releasing its annual report on the state of the public service sector in Parliament, Cape Town, today, the Public Service Commission (PSC) said despite government's good intentions to improve service delivery, it was faced with major challenges in the implementation of its policies, especially at the provincial level.

'Many provincial administrations (where 70 percent of the employees are stationed) are still vulnerable and need support, although there are cases of excellent administrations,' said a report by the Pretoria-based commission, which is responsible for monitoring and evaluating the public sector.

The report is the second by the Commission.

The Public Service has at least a million employees, making government the largest employer in the country.

PSC chairperson Stan Sangwane said corruption, especially around the procurement of goods and services, as well as filing and record keeping, remained a major risk area that needed to be closed, as it created opportunities for corrupt practices.

According to a corruption report released by the public service and administration ministry this week on business perceptions on corruption in government, at least 15 percent of businesses said they were approached by officials to pay bribes with seven percent ending up paying to clinch deals.

However 35 percent believed that government was doing well to fight corruption.

At least 28 percent of businesses fingered police, local government employees, home affairs, customs and senior government officials as being the most corrupt.

The most shocking was the agreement by business (62 percent) that 'bribery was accepted business practice' especially amongst the construction, agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors.

The PSC recommended as part of the sector's remedial treatment, the tightening of loose bolts and closing down of loopholes to back-up the Public Finance Management Act and other anti-corruption measures tailored to address corruption.

'The PSC recommends that departments ensure that they have a minimum anti-corruption capacity working according to standardised reporting areas.

Also a training on integrated ethics management should be developed and should be a standard requirement for all public managers,' said the report.

The report also suggested the ironing out of outstanding issues in the new human resource management policy and for the provision of more extensive training to public sector managers on some challenging areas including discipline, sick leave and suspension.

Asked about the deep-rooted corruption in the Eastern Cape administration, the commission, which has deployed two of its top officials to the region to help with administration as part of government's intervention, said the problems there were serious. It noted that amongst others, there prevailed a culture of entitlement.

'The kind of culture that has emerged within the amalgamated (Transkei, Ciskei and Cape public service) administration is a very unhealthy culture..it is an unethical culture....there is a culture of entitlement in the province,' said PSC acting director general Richard Levin.

Prof Levin said the Bisho-based provincial administration, which he described as 'unaccountable and irresponsible' further fuelled the situation by failing to act against corrupt officials.

Earlier this week, Public Service and Administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, who also committed her director-general to the region to oversee the work of the task team deployed there, described the attitude of some officials towards service delivery as 'devil may care'.

With acknowledgements to Sapa, Matome Sebelebele and Government Communication Information System