Many famous personalities and writers have described Mauritius as an icon paradise glistening in the Indian Ocean. There is no doubt that Mauritius stands on its own when beaches, lagoons and beautiful countryside are compared around the world.
Post-Covid era is an opportunity to accelerate societal changes enhancing preventative hygiene levels, infrastructure improvements and change and empower people to progress materially as well as mentally.
What follows is a snapshot view of the island compiled during a visit in December 2022.
Society
Mauritius is multicultural blessed with a population of different colours, extracts and religions. On the surface, especially in the
countryside villages, society does not appear to have changed much. Life is relatively slow-paced with people embracing economic realities that both husband and wife must have a job to make ends meet.
The economic difficulties experienced worldwide are obvious in Mauritius. Rising prices and static or lower wages are concerning with a drop in living standards of the population. Mauritius has aspired to a high-wage economy with some sectors earning wages that other sectors will never reach. The lion’s share of the cake, the national wealth, is shared between only 2% of the elites in Mauritius. It is worth noting that Politics pays well and salaries and per diem allowances for ministers are much higher than the G7 leaders. What a contrast!
How have the 98% of the population been faring? They are people who are trapped in economic warfare and political manoeuvrings with promises of uplift in lifestyle, infrastructure and employment. However, the reality is that the 2% are the chiefs of the politicians with the master plan to improve the varied social strata based on religion, caste and nepotism.
The 2% has been responding to market changes and creating new demand and supply strategies. They have been proactive and full of insight for the future diversifying from sugar cane plantation to tourism. Mauritius has anchored itself very firmly in the elite sector of tourism due to relentless work done by the 2% developing new hotels enticing the rich and famous as well as the mainstream holiday makers. The success of the vision of the 2% has largely depended on the calibre of staff in the tourism sector. Here the 98% have responded, learnt the trade and stood up to the challenge of providing quality service sought after.
The success of tourism is the result of this partnership between the 2% and the 98%. The driver for this kind of partnership appears to be a better style of living. This message has not been publicised widely to educate the population about the route to success and quality living. Modernism is talked about but the pillars for modernism is not clearly sign posted in our society. The successful enterprises should step forward and offer mentorship and coaching to the young generation.
Positive Change
Change is in abundance in Mauritius at every level. However, mentality is still to shift in some sectors. The physical structures change and people have embraced them, which is really great. The cybercity is just one example along with the smart cities. Diving into the mire of business dealings where sometimes bureaucracy move at an elephant’s pace revealed a positive experience.
I had the opportunity to visit Ebene, and it is impressive. I turned up at the entrance of STC building. Environment is first class, clean shiny entrance. Telephonist courteous and said that I have come during lunchtime and this usually means one hour wait. No, not in this case. The telephonist said I will ring around and try to find you someone. This was like a shot in the arm for politeness, respect for the customer and I was directed to a cool place to sit and wait. Around five minutes later, a pleasant lady came to see me during her lunchtime with pen and writing pad in hand, listened to my request for making all business payments online and advised me that next time there is no need to travel and attend offices in person. A simple email with appropriate detail will suffice and all my payments can be
made online. I explained the urgency of the situation, she reassured me to ping her an email which I did that afternoon and the whole matter was resolved ready for action within two days and letter arrived in the post. That’s fast. This was a test and the institution passed with flying colours.
I catalogue a slightly negative experience not for criticism’s sake but to highlight areas of deficiency and perhaps to learn lessons from companies. My second experience with telephone services was not that positive. As I came into the MT centre, a lady stopped me at the entrance. Wait outside in the burning sun. What is it that you want, she says. I explained I want broadband and business boost. She pointed me to two young teenage-looking boys two steps away. They asked the same questions, and I repeated the purpose of my visit. Go there and see the lady when she is free, he said. Interpersonal skills were not quite at the right level of customer service. Monosyllabic and no courtesy. I am feeling I am back in an institution which is archaic and overmanned by youngsters dotted around the place creating inconvenience instead of assisting.
MT still needs a series of duplicates, wide ranging documents and bureaucratic crassness flowed through my encounter. Information and documents in the public domain that they can access from the Company House was not accessed and printed out. Wait for it. The lady behind the desk says go to Flacq District Council and ask for a copy there. I asked do they have an office for this there? Yes, try it she retorted. I was directed to a new building next to the market place. Oh dear this building reminded me of my first encounter in a psychiatric hospital, noisy, loud, and no courtesy. Nobody seems to know why they are there trying to look officious. This place needs organisation and sound management. It reeks of an atmosphere of chaos and disregard. There is room for improvement and training of staff in this kind of government institution. MT needs to plug in and sort out the mixed wires in its policies and training of staff.
Positive changes are taking place but there is a lack of sharing experiences and expertise among the departments or ministries. There is a college for civil servants but there is even a greater need for senior officers to cascade the training they are receiving and engage in supervision. My two short experiences show that skill-based training is
what is required to raise the standards in public services.
The civil service college should adopt the new school way of thinking:
· A skills development program is a worthwhile investment that leads to increased productivity
· It’s crucial to ensure a certain standard of skill sets across teams and institution;
· Skills training programs enhance nearly every aspect of your employees’ interactions with customers, prospects, and even teammates.
Progress
Progress is talked about in terms of movement towards a defined or agreed destination. Our leaders should specify and define destinations in their political manifesto and business strategy. Businesses and institutions are progressing but certain departments need a greater nudge in the right direction of service provision and respect for people. Progress is not only having big shopping malls and glossy publicity but a fundamental shift of attitudes, skills and knowledge; a progressive advancement of the humankind. In other words,
learning has to be at the centre of progress. Learning to respect, learning to serve and work to defined standards. Tourism has done it. There is no reason why public service institutions cannot achieve similar standards.
The human resources master plan should revolve around hard and soft skills. I repeat again a national skill-based educational programme should be rolled out without delay if we want to accelerate progress in Mauritius. This will ensure strategic progress takes the people along with developments and progress to better standards in life skills, environmental valorisation and interpersonal skills. When population lags behind there is no progress. It is not about lack of capacity or qualified people but about empowering people to move forward with structural developments.
People need structures, frameworks and destinations. The more clearly we articulate these three pillars of development, the more people cooperate and are likely to come aboard and move with the time. For example, television produces a number of different commodities. TV sells packaged lifestyles in programs, it sells skills that modern living needs, products and
promotion of healthy living. It establishes popular culture and can be seen as a flagship feature of progress. It is still a confusing puzzle that Mauritius has not promoted private TV stations which will help people move forward. Governments must not see MBC as the only pictorial medium, we have various stations via Facebook and it is time to set the development of TV stations free and accelerate progress. TV as well as Radio lead a far greater cultural transformation and this must be made accessible to the new generation.
Youths of today have a new vision of what Mauritius is about and the lifestyles that they can aspire to. It is imperative that this is facilitated at the strategic level otherwise the young generation will suffer the same fate of frustration and then leave the country. There is an increasing amount of knowledge of sophisticated versions of progress (be it of the elitist or populist variety) around the world and refined perspectives of social theory enabling people to move up the social strata. High wage economy and capitalism as aspired by the Mauritian government thrive on these modern versions of progress. However, authorities may be attuned to potential political conflict and struggle. This is inevitable and
perhaps is the price of accelerating progress. The contemporary battle is not about slowing progress but harmonising it to improve the welfare of people and providing opportunities for self-actualisation. The agenda of difficulties should be transformed into an agenda of possibilities and hope.
Conclusion
Mauritius is ripe for addressing the inescapable tension between rhetoric and real change. There is a sharpening of that tension exposing the antagonistic political and cultural views enabling us to make our notion of community and nationhood a way of having disagreements productively among ourselves. It is no longer possible for rhetorical means of rationalising the domination and subordination that may exist already. It’s time for substantive change and it’s coming.
