A Load of Crap
As if the residents of the Gaza strip haven't already suffered enough at the hands of their elected leadership, today comes word of even more:
At least four Palestinians drowned in a tsunami of raw sewage on Tuesday when a water treatment reservoir burst, flooding a village in the northern Gaza Strip. The deluge, triggered by the collapse of a septic system aid organizations had long warned was dangerously overburdened, submerged dozens of homes in the Bedouin farming village of Umm al-Nasr beneath a cesspool of foul-smelling effluent. Two women, one more than 70 years old, and two toddlers aged one and two died in the flood. Fifteen people were injured and scores more are still missing, according to Palestinian medics. Village children clung to wooden doors floating on the putrid waters as rescuers used boats to help the victims. "The situation is very bad," village mayor Ziad Abu Thabet said, comparing the disaster to a "tsunami." "Around 70 percent of the village houses were flooded by the waters," he said. Palestinian television and radio opened their news broadcasts by also describing the disaster as a "sewage tsunami."
As should be expected, someone from the government came to inspect the situation. He didn't receive a warm welcome:
Newly appointed Palestinian interior minister Hani al-Qawasmeh rushed to the scene to inspect the damage, but angry villagers chased him off by firing guns at his convoy and wounding two policemen, witnesses said.
Nor should the minister have expected one when his government's response to a tidal wave of crap was a load of crap like this:
The Islamist Hamas movement, the leading partner in a newly formed Palestinian unity government, blamed the disaster on the suspension of direct foreign aid to the cabinet that was imposed a year ago when it formed a cabinet alone. Hamas is considered in the West to be a terrorist group. "Hamas thinks that the overflowing of the basin is one of the results of the suspension of international aid to our people, which is preventing the government from improving and developing infrastructure," it said in a statement.
Commentary
Money isn't the problem here. It's attitude and attribution. Instead of accepting responsibility for its failure to provide basic services for its citizens, Hamas chooses to finger-point. Management theorists call such behavior a self-serving bias:
A self-serving bias occurs when people are more likely to claim responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests. For instance, a student who gets a good grade on an exam might say, "I got an A because I am intelligent and I studied hard!" while a student who does poorly on an exam might say, "The teacher gave me an F because he does not like me!" A good example of this can be found in the behaviour of English Premiership managers. When their team has performed well, the manager will be all too eager to shower the team (himself included) with praise. When a Premiership team loses, it is very rare for the manager to take the blame himself, admit his team played badly, or accept the opposition were superior. In most cases the manager will blame the referee for misjudging key decisions which led to the loss.
What Mr. al-Qawasmeh and the other members of his government need is a crash course in government accountability. Below I offer a few paragraphs from the US Chamber of Commerce website which they ought to seriously consider:
American citizens and American businesses are judged on results every day. Companies that produce high-quality products at the lowest possible cost are rewarded in the marketplace. Those that don’t, often fail. Likewise, workers who succeed in their jobs earn promotions and raises. Weak performers don’t advance, or worse, lose their jobs. This kind of accountability -- which is at the heart of American capitalism -- serves American businesses -- and by extension, Americans well. And that is why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce applauds the administration’s recent initiatives to use a similar system to make government agencies more accountable for their performance. Giving out grades for results, linking funding with performance, and opening up government jobs to private sector competition are central components of the administration’s plan to get more out of government.This system of results and performance incentives, though new to government, has been the foundation of our free enterprise system since our nation’s birth. Every day, millions of U.S. companies are “graded” by investors, customers and employees. Successful managers pause, evaluate and change direction, if necessary. For example, if a major automobile manufacturer produces a vehicle that has disappointing sales, it doesn’t keep churning out the same model the next year. Instead, its engineers go back to the drawing board and attempt to redesign a car that consumers will respond to.
With this new system of government accountability in place, government agencies, like American businesses, will be rewarded for using taxpayer money for high value programs – and government managers will be encouraged to critically examine their departments against agreed-upon objectives and make changes when the agencies they manage come up short.
The last half of the last sentence holds the key for the Hamas government on this issue and maybe others : "make changes when the agencies... come up short" or you may come up short in your next performance review, i.e. election. Clearly, many of your constituents have a keen eye for BS and are in no mood to put up with it.
Tags: 
hamas | 
gaza | 
palestine | 
sewage
See also: Geology Joe | The Compass Blog | Right Wing Vet |