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Corruption results from low Public Servants morale – Granger
He should apologize for comments – says Rohee
General Secretary of the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) Clement Rohee has said that Leader of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), David Granger, should apologize for the comments he made in an article captioned ‘Corruption festered by low Public Servants morale’. The article was published in Kaieteur News on March 17, 2014.
Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee
According to Rohee, Granger is reported as saying that public servants turn a blind eye to corrupt practices because of inadequate wages and salaries paid to them. This in turn leads to low morale.
“The PPP takes strong objections to this statement and insinuations made by Granger against public officials… To suggest that our public servants are prone to corrupt practices in the exercise of their duties it tantamount to an attack on their integrity and professionalism.”
“No less disrespectful is the attempt by Mr. Granger to draw a link between the salaries paid to public servants and the standard of professionalism that currently exist in the public service. The PPP is of the view that a public apology should be made to the nation’s public servants by Mr. Granger” said Rohee.
Rohee said that the salaries of public servants at the minimum level have seen increases to as little as $40,000 per month. “In addition the PPP government has kept inflation in check unlike what obtained under the PNC [Peoples National Congress] regime when real wages were gobbled up by the monster of inflation.”
According to Rohee, who is also the Minister of Home Affairs, “We have put up a website called ‘I paid a Bribe’ to deal with the question of corruption. I think that deserves some credit.”
He said that this website is the only one in the country and it is his Ministry that set it up because it is concerned just as everybody else. “We took an initiative precisely because of the consistent and persistent complaints of corruption in the Guyana Police force and other departments that fall under the Ministry of Home Affairs. So we need to have balance on this matter give Jack its Jacket.”
Rohee said that whenever those reports of corruption appear they would send them to the relevant departments and ask them to deal with them. He explained that when they send this information to the relevant government agencies and departments that have been named. “We consider our duty accomplished; they now have to take it from there to either carry out a department investigation to do what is necessary internally. We would not be intrusive in the department at least we have given them the information.”
He said that the fact that “we have set up website is an indication of our efforts to deal with corruption.”
Why should Granger apologize for what he said? Rohee himself admitted that there is corruption within the service sector.
Rohee responded that the context in which he said it was that “people are going in for drugs in the public service to prop up their salaries because the salaries are too low paid by government.”
Leader of APNU
David Granger
Granger has said in the article in question that for governmental corruption to take place regardless of what form it might be manifested in, it would mean that a public servant has turned a blind eye or failed to exercise diligent supervision.
“I am not accusing the public servants but sometimes people are paid not to only look away but to do nothing. You may be a sentry at a position and the man tells you just go to the washroom between half past eleven and half past twelve tonight. That’s all. You don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to touch anything, just go to the washroom because you have a bad stomach and at the end you have $500,000.”
Granger explained that corruption can take place in many forms but as far as governmental corruption is concerned, much of it “occurs because of the low morale in the Guyana Public Service and that is related directly to the way the PPP/C administration has been treating the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) since 1999, failing to negotiate in good faith, failing to grant public servants a good wage and reducing them to the level of poverty.”
“You can’t eliminate corruption completely but we can reduce it by having properly trained, paid and supervised officers. That is the root of corruption. It takes two but if you have a magistrate or a civil servant who is capable of resisting somebody who is trying to bribe him or her, we then will start to turn the tide,” said Granger.
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