A Career within the Local Government Sector

Why should the resident consider a career within the Local Council?

The Local Council is the closest authority to the resident.  The primary role of any  Local Council is to create a positive experience in the life of its residents while assisting them and the community to develop in a  sustainable manner. This leads to a higher sense of belonging from the residents towards their locality.

Each resident could actively contribute towards this change in three particular ways:

• By contesting the local elections
• By applying to any of the vacancies within the Local Councils
• By participating in any voluntary work and other initiatives organised by the Local Council
• By participating in the various discussions and consultation processes which eventually could be part of the decisions taken by the Local Council

Today, I would like to focus why an individual should consider a career within one of our Local Councils.

Like in all other employments, most employees would look into the financial package of the job.  However, on the same level of importance is the level of personal satisfaction that same job would give to the individual – the take home feeling after a day’s work with your colleagues.

Local Councils offer the unique opportunity to satisfy these two important criteria. The fact that the role of the Local Council is there to help you accomplish the above mentioned also leads to the fact that it offers the opportunity for direct contact with other residents who most of the time approach the Local Councils for help and assistance.

Working with the Local Council  offers an opportunity to meet with different people with different challenges – something that makes daily work less monotonous and more challenging.  This type of employment gives you the opportunity to be in touch with that senior citizen who needs assistance when completing an application, the opportunity to meet that person with special needs who needs assistance for a reserved parking, the opportunity to assist other residents who need special permits to carry out works in their residences. Above all, employment with the Local Council provides you with the opportunity to work on different areas namely social, cultural, animal welfare, active ageing, refuse management, infrastructural and environmental sustainability, village exchanges and improvement in traffic systems. All of these different sectors would eventually help you develop different skills and abilities for an improved life style.

Local Council elected members do spend less time with their staff the latter considered to be the face of their locality. One must understand the important role Local Council employees play within their area; this all boils down to the positive attitude and right frame of mind they have coupled with the urge to improve the quality of life of their residents.

This is undoubtedly sheer job satisfaction and despite that not everything is plain sailing there would be the days where one has to face irritated residents who would either lack some sort of basic understanding of how Local Councils work or else would be innocently blamed for any outcome which eventually would not fall into the Council’s competency. It’s hard to explain to the residents when for example they would have an issue and would pretend the local council to solve it for them; it is during such circumstances where the skills and abilities of our employees need to be highlighted. There are situations where a resident would approach the Local Council in sheer frustration and would end up leaving much calmer as he would eventually understand that certain things are not always as one would think they are. Only those attending to the residents’ needs within the Local Council could actually provide the residents with further assist the same residents to gradually change their perception on the Local Council.  This goes hand in hand with the way staff assist the residents through the telephone nowadays.

Is employment within the Local Council a bed of roses and provides you always a sense of satisfaction? Surely not.

Employees within the Local Councils go beyond their call of duty, making sacrifices and work long hours due to their sense of commitment towards their locality and councillors. Others go out of their way even on matters that do not fall within their remit to handle and explain processes; this is due to lack of resources.

Employees, often face uncomfortable situations; situations where they would feel threatened or hardly recognized for their efforts from those who could barely reason things out.

A career within the Local Council provides you with the opportunity to help you enhance your skills through training and a number of courses; this training would not only be beneficial for the current employment but would serve to enhance you holistically

overall throughout your personal and private life. The experiences one would collate from working in different local councils would definitely provide you with different perspectives of what the general public needs and the way they think about certain matters.

All-in-all I still believe that there are many valid reasons why one should consider taking a career within the sphere of Local Government namely:

• To have the ability to actually make a change in the life of people within your locality
• Have the possibility to actually spend the day’s work to affect positive changes within the same locality
• To be part of a change which actually brings a bigger change in people’s lives
• To get the opportunity to actually implement one’s own ideas coupled with those of the local council for better leadership within the locality
• To be in a better position to actually understand the rationale why the Local Council does take certain decisions or environmental initiatives of which one could be part even during the initial stages
• To rekindle passion and appreciate the effort done for certain tasks which take place and which most of the time would have been taken for granted
• To be part and parcel of a needed socio-economical change while having the opportunity to meet with different people
• To, along with other colleagues be in the right position to instigate and enforce pressure for certain changes to happen both at a national and local level
• Local Council enriches the individual; it would give you the right dose of exposure to certain experiences which would actually make a tangible change in people’s lives
• Would give you the opportunity to implement the electoral manifesto which in itself provides a massive challenge

Work within Local Councils offers a unique opportunity to the ones involved to plan ahead for their communities.  The projects involved could vary from culture and arts, from having a central library to environmental initiatives, enhanced security within the area, long life learning opportunities, providing social assistance, improved infrastructure and an endless list of benefits.   All of this contributes towards the residents’ aspirations.

Since Local Councils are part of the public sector, this would serve as a key indicator about how this same service could reach people’s expectations.  Employees constitute a crucial part of this whole process by the way they work and operate one day after the other.

Undoubtedly, work within the Local Council does not only test one’s abilities but is a test to one’s skills and characteristics. It is an opportunity of how one could directly participate in the decisions and implementations where individuals have a right to air and voice their opinion.

Mario Fava
President