The 7th National Batho Pele Excellence Awards programme – Call for Entries

The Department of Public Service and Administration has opened the nomination process for the National Batho Pele Excellence Awards (NBPEA) for the 2020/21 period.

Background

The NBPEA programme was launched in 2013 as an effort to encourage continuous performance improvement and promote professional and productive public service that delivers quality public services.

The purpose of the programme is to entrench transformation and professionalisation of the public service by rewarding excellent service delivery and recognising contribution of public servants, as well as to promote sharing of best practices, learning and gauging citizen satisfaction towards government performance.

It further aims to transform and professionalise the public service and improve service delivery by putting into operation the ideas towards building a capable and ethical developmental state, as enunciated in the National Development Plan (NDP).

The NDP envisions a public administration that is professional, responsive, capable and responsible to ensure the plan meets its 2030 goals. The awards are therefore an effort to encourage all three spheres of government to create a caring public service which includes recognising and rewarding staff excellence.

Call for Entries

The nominations process opened on Friday, 14 January 2022 and will close on 15 February 2022. This Call for Entries officially marks the start of the prestigious awards programme, which allows public servants in Government Departments at national and provincial levels, Government employees at Municipal level, civic and private organisations, as well as members of the public at large to nominate deserving public officials and departments in the various categories listed for this round of public service awards.

The focus of this 7th NBPEA edition is on recognising public servants’ efforts at combating the Covid-19 pandemic, under the theme “Combating the Covid-19 pandemic through a Batho Pele focus: Putting People First”. The awards will recognise and reward public servants, professionals and researchers who excelled at handling Covid cases, assisting patients to recover in numbers and in ultimately determining and ensuring the safety mechanisms for the general public.

Categories to be nominated for include the:

• Best Doctor of the Year;
• Best Researcher of the Year;
• Best Covid-19 Health Worker of the Year;
• Best Responsive Government Institution of the Year;
• Best Front-Line Service Delivery Employee of the Year;
• Best General Worker of the Year (Level 1-5).

Nomination forms can be accessed on www.dpsa.gov.za.

Amid the ongoing devastating COVID-19 pandemic, brave public servants continue to demonstrate the spirit of Batho Pele and have rolled up their sleeves to save and protect citizens selflessly, putting their own lives at risk, with some losing their lives in the process.

The 7th NBPEA ceremony will be held on 25th March 2022.

Source: Government of South Africa