Clarifications at the Commission of Enquiry

Oct 16, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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One cannot expect the press to highlight every aspect of a public speech. The journalist and editor would decide which sections readers would find informative. Many of my thoughts which were delivered to the Commission of Inquiry into the Public Service were not carried in the media. I also did not elaborate on the concept of contract workers in the public service. What follows below are parts of my presentations that were not reported on.
I did say that I found the Structural Adjustment Programme of the Hoyte presidency to be the beginning of the laceration of the status and livelihood of public sector employees in general. Mr. Hoyte’s Economic Recovery Programme hurt the public sector sphere of employment more than any other strata. The shockingly large devaluation of the Guyana dollar against the American currency hurt public sector salaries in deep ways. It was from 1988 onwards that one began to see the loss of prestige and income in the public sector in general. Also one of the main targets of the Economic Recovery Programme was the curtailment of spending in the public sector that specifically included wages and salaries
The press reported me as saying that the presence of an enormous amount of contract employees in the public service during the tenure of the PPP, was a mechanism designed to engender ethnic dominance at the top of the public service hierarchy. My research that I presented to the Commission bears this out. What I did not tell the Commission was my conceptual approach to contract workers specifically. Contract workers program in the employ of the government in a country like Guyana is a necessity. The public service does not have and in the foreseeable future will not have the admirable skills that it needs. Guyana is way behind even small Surinam
What President Jagdeo did in his 12 year reign was to use the service of contract employees as a political tool and an ethnic mechanism to bolster the power base of the PPP. The concept of contract employees was thus vitiated. What is needed is a design that would have the authority of contract employees separated from the mainstream jurisdiction of the professional public service.
I cannot envisage future governments in this country ditching the use of contract employees. Government should not turn their backs on scarce skills. I would like to be a contract worker in the labour department
I did touch in a very emotional way, my feelings on one of the most horrible anachronistic institutions still alive in this country – retirement at 55 for public servants. I offered my explanation on the origin of the meaning of retirement as it came down to modern world. Retirement’s essential purpose was to finally free the employed person from the permanency of work for him/her to pursuit the pleasures and leisure of life. I cited the need for a retiree to finally climb the mountain he/she always desired. But leisure and pleasure had to come from your pension. If the pension was small, it defeated the very reason for the existence of retirement
The Commissioner’s Chairman, Professor Harold Lutchman nodded his head when I  mentioned the ignominy of life in Guyana whereby former UG Chancellor, Dr. George Walcott took home less than $7000 in monthly pension from UG. This may seem to those not familiar with the history of Guyana as an exaggeration but it wasn’t. This naked absurdity was highlighted in the press and was the subject of a Stabroek News editorial. In which part of the world they pension off public servants at age 55?
My presentation also included pay rise for public servants. One cannot seriously analyze the future of this county without an examination of the wage and salary structure of public servants. The state is the fulcrum on which society rests. Even in neo-liberal economies the role of the state is no less important. In the US despite hateful calls among the extreme right-wing for a drastic curtailment of government’s role in society, if the far-right Tea Party people were to control the government, the role of the state would not be any less powerful than under an administration of libel democrats.
State employees then, given their strategic roles in society need to have an income that is as respectful as in any other sector of a country .Since the Economic Recovery Program of President Desmond Hoyte, the damage done to the income structure of civil servants and public sector workers has remained and was further smothered by a distrustful revengeful PPP Government. Public sector pay is disgraceful.  Or maybe horrible is a more suitable word
Editor’s note: This column was read for libel and nothing else.

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