The past has returned to haunt the present

Oct 16, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The government is intent on changing the face of the public service. It is intent on replacing persons whom it feels were sympathetic to the People’s Progressive Party and replace them with its own lackeys.
The government is oblivious to the danger such moves can cause in a society such as Guyana, where people are going to feel that they are victimized and people can be victimized under the pretext of improving the system of public administration.
For public servants, the government does not have the full latitude to do as it pleases, since the powers of appointment and dismissal rest with the Public Service Commission, which is supposed to be an independent authority.
The government is now being accused, by the main opposition, of attempting to control the constitutional service commissions that have to do with appointments and dismissals to public offices.
The government’s plan to change the face of the public service has been boosted by the fact that a large number of persons who are employed within the public service have opted to forego the statutory protections afforded by the service commission in favour of contract employment. They have exposed themselves, in the process, to being removed at the behest of the administration.
This risk was always known. But those who opted for contract employment have a right to do so and this right should be respected. The modern day public servants are not attracted to security of tenure which is guaranteed by formal public service appointment. They do not plan to work in the public service for over thirty years just to enjoy a pension. They are opting for contract employment in which they can negotiate their own terms rather than have to rely on collective bargaining, which has never brought substantial benefits to public workers.
APNU and the AFC had attacked the employment of contract employees under the PPPC. They have come to power and they have done the same. The most highly paid employees within the public service, some of whom are earning monies they never saw before in any other job, are all contract employees.
The government is not insisting that these persons work for public service pay grades. But it is insisting that junior employees on contract become part of the formal public service and therefore forego certain benefits to which they have long been accustomed. But that is the convenient change of face of public administration in Guyana.
The public service is going to suffer. Since the Reagan-Thatcher era when public services were contracted out and the size of the bureaucracy was shrunk, there has been more flexible employment within public services worldwide, with more and more persons opting for contract employment. This was almost forty years ago, yet APNU and the AFC, when in opposition, were pressing for Guyana to remain in the past, by their rejection of contract employment.
The more worrying problem, though, is what is seen as attempts to undermine the very system of public service impartiality. The government is being accused of attempting to undermine the independence of service commissions.
There is also grave concern over the attempts by the government to impose its will on public corporations which are not bound by public service rules and whose Boards are their own masters. The government has no place to be instructing a Board as to sending someone on their leave. This is the exclusive right of the Boards, and those who consent to such intrusion should rethink their actions, because it will lead to the further politicization of public corporations.
One Minister has been persistent in trying to remove a Chief Executive Officer against the wishes of the Board of the entity concerned. A Chairman of the Board of Directors has resigned because he is not prepared to be a rubber stamp. Lawyers are being consulted as to who has powers to do what and who cannot do what.
This confusion is because of the obsession of the government with control, and with having its friends placed in certain positions. A professional public service is just a figment. The very idea is being mocked by the actions of the government.
Professionals have no stomach for these things. They are not going to fight it and incur the wrath of the government. They will simply walk, as the best of our professionals did under Burnham.

1 thoughts on “The past has returned to haunt the present”

Pedro October 16, 2016 at 12:36 pm

After Independance, the Public Service lost it’s identity, as entity, that was there to serve, any Government in power.Instead of being a politically neutral,,”service to the nation entity”, they were turned into the politcal servant of the party in power, and was then padded with the followers of the party in power. This has continued to date, hence the firing, then padding after each election.