HIBAPRESS – Rabat
As multi-service regional companies enter a new phase in managing the water, electricity, and liquid sanitation sectors, the question is no longer just: Have the institutions changed? It has become more urgent: Have the mentalities also changed?
While regional companies strive to impose a new dynamic based on efficiency, speed, proximity to the citizen, and linking responsibility to performance and results, question marks are raised about the ability of some employees of the services that previously belonged to the National Office of Electricity, especially in the distribution sector, to keep pace with these transformations.
According to what is being circulated in professional circles, some practices still reflect an old mentality based on dependence, slowness, and indifference, and sometimes on a kind of arrogance in dealing with the citizen. These practices seem more evident today because they directly clash with the logic of regional companies, which is based on initiative, presence, responsibility, and results.
Most surprisingly, a citizen may find themselves, in some agencies and services that previously belonged to the Office, waiting for hours or days, and perhaps for longer periods, to meet the person responsible for their file, at a time when the administration is supposed to be at the service of the citizen, not the other way around.
Is it reasonable for institutions to move to a new phase while some insist on working with the mentality of a phase that has ended?
The era of dependence and taking refuge in the past is over. Regional companies did not come only to change the name of the institution or redistribute responsibilities; they came to fundamentally transform the work culture: from waiting to initiative, from justification to achievement, from bureaucratic dealing to serving the citizen, and from a "cannot" mentality to a "how can we achieve?" mentality.
Remarkably, some voices, instead of engaging in this dynamic and proving their ability to keep pace with the phase, still – according to what is circulated within professional circles – look at the past with nostalgia and seek umbrellas to protect the continuation of practices that are no longer sustainable in a new system characterized by governance, efficiency, and linking responsibility to accountability.
Of course, not all employees can be put in the same basket. There are competent individuals, cadres, and employees who have demonstrated a high spirit of responsibility and commitment. However, the persistence of some old mentalities, regardless of their scale, raises a fundamental question:
Have all understood that the era of regional companies is not an extension of the era of the National Office of Electricity, and that the rules of the game have truly changed?
The message that regional companies seem to want to embed is clear: there is no place for indifference, no place for dependence, no place for arrogance towards the citizen, and no place for the logic of "the file awaits its owner."
The new phase requires an employee who is present, responsible, proactive, and productive, and an administration that measures its performance by what it offers to the citizen, not by years of service or by how things were in the past.
In the end, the biggest challenge for regional companies may not be technical or financial, but rather a battle to change mentalities. And whoever cannot keep pace with this speed and this new logic may simply find themselves outside the fold of regional companies, no matter how their status or position within it changes.
