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AMMAN — Teams from the Public Sector Development Ministry recently carried out unannounced visits to two departments affiliated with the Education Ministry to evaluate the quality of services offered to the public.
The visits were conducted by specialists in the field of developing government services, who prepared a detailed report of their observations, a copy of which was sent to Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour, according to the Public Sector Development Ministry.
The report, which was made available to The Jordan Times, said that during a visit to the private education department, the team noticed that it is difficult to locate because there are no guidance signs.
The inspection team had to ask people for directions to reach the department.
The report said the department is in a residential area and that the building was “very old and in a bad condition”.
No parking space was available outside the premises, and there were queues of people waiting to be served, the report said.
Most people were visiting the department to complete measures to transfer students from private to public schools, but the team found that the employees in this particular building were in charge of issuing licences to private schools, so parents and students had to go to another building located on a commercial street to process their papers.
Queues were seen outside the other building, which the report described as a small office that cannot accommodate a large number of people.
“The building lacked an office for customer service and employees did not give special attention to women, the elderly and people with disabilities,” the report noted.
As the department was part of a commercial building, it lacked waiting areas for customers, who have to wait either on the steps of the building or on the sidewalks of the street.
Out of 65 customers waiting for services, only seven were inside the department while the rest were either on the steps or outside, the report said.
The specialists also visited the education directorate of Amman’s central district, which was also hard to find due to lack of direction signs, the report said, adding that the employee in charge of offering customer services was not at the office, which forced people to move between different rooms to find where they can be served.
However, the report noted that the employees were cooperative with customers and answered their queries appropriately.
The ministry said it will continue its unannounced visits to government agencies in an attempt to improve the quality of public sector services.