Questions must be raised about the process

Sep 08, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Head of the National Aids Programme Secretariat (NAPS) has resigned. She is to be replaced by someone whom we are told is to be seconded from her present job at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation. The big questions are: Why was the position of the Head of the National Aids Programme Secretariat not advertised? How will the public know that the best person has been chosen for the job?
The government promised better. They should show they are better by making appointments based on a competitive and meritorious process.
The position of the Head of NAPS is a very high paying position. There may be persons out there who may feel that they should have been given a chance to apply for the position, which is one of the highest paying positions in the health sector. Why have those persons not been given a chance to apply for the job?
If the person now earmarked for the job is the best candidate, then what is there to lose by having a competitive process? Is there a consistent policy in the government as to which positions will be advertised and which will be filled by handpicked persons?
How does the government expect qualified persons within the National Aids Programme Secretariat to feel, seeing that someone from outside of their department has been earmarked to succeed the head who has resigned? Persons within NAPS may have felt that they should have succeeded the person who resigned, as is the custom in many institutions.
Why is someone being seconded from another government agency to head NAPS? Should the person not resign from her old job in order to take up the new job? Is there a probation period and who assesses the performance of the person who is being appointed?
These questions are not intended to indicate that the person appointed is not suited for the job. She may well be more than suited for the job. The questions are intended to indicate the total absence of transparency with which some appointments are being made. For such an important and high-paying job, the position should have been advertised and persons should have been invited to apply. The media needs to question how and who it is that decided who should replace the head of NAPS.
The person selected looks relatively young. But there are other positions which are being filled by retirees. One such position is the Head of the Civil Aviation Department which is being headed by a retired pilot who once worked in the army and at the Guyana Airways Corporation, but who also had experience in the aviation sector overseas.
The person certainly has the experience, but the question is whether someone else in the Civil Aviation Sector and someone younger, and who is not a retiree, could not have been selected for the job. This position may have been advertised. I cannot say, but it is strange if it was advertised that there would not have been many other serious contenders for the job.
Perhaps the Kaieteur News can check and see if the position of the Head of Civil Aviation was advertised and the successful candidate emerged from a competitive interview system. The Minister of Public Infrastructure should be able to provide answers to these questions.
These questions are being raised because of the controversy which has erupted at Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI). A person appointed to the position of Debt Recovery Manager was said to not be a university graduate. The person claimed that the position only required a secondary school education and CXC subjects. It is confusing that such an important position should carry such low academic requirements when public sector positions at an equivalent level require a university degree.
The Board of the GWI eventually terminated the services of the Debt Recovery Manager on the grounds that he was not qualified. The Board needs to ask itself how this person was appointed in the first place, and why it took so long for the Board to ascertain that the person may have been under-qualified for the job.
Political appointees have been placed in many other public sector jobs. Persons have been appointed to senior positions in the public service without a competitive process. This has happened in quite a few agencies. It will happen again, unless questions are raised about the process through which appointments take place.

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