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Absolutely no ethnic considerations in choosing Permanent Secretaries – Harmon
Accusation that the administration is involved in ethnic cleansing at the level of its Permanent Secretaries (PS) is absolutely untrue, Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, insisted yesterday.
Minister Joseph Harmon
The official was at the time responding to a letter in yesterday’s edition of Kaieteur News in which the writer, Sase Singh, listed 16 Permanent Secretaries and argued that there is ethnic bias in the appointments.
Singh wrote that from his reading, all the presidents before David Granger were committed to moulding the nation. “Today the evidence is there to prove that we have a real situation of ethnic bias under the Granger administration.”
Listing 16 Permanent Secretaries, he said that “fifteen of them are from one race and these facts cannot be washed away.”
However, Harmon made it clear yesterday that Singh did not do his research as it would have been found that except for a few, the majority of the Permanent Secretaries were inherited when the new government took office in May 2015.
According to the Minister of State, people are affected as the accusations are false.
Singh falsely argued on the wrong premise that “anybody that is not Indian is African. That is how he started off and so anybody else in that mix of Permanent Secretaries that were there who was not an Indian was considered to be black”.
Harmon said that the “Permanent Secretaries who are there now were all in the system and so what we said was that we have to give the public servants upward mobility. Therefore, whenever any PS is removed, we look internally in the public service for the senior persons who have been there serving and have the qualifications and we move them up.”
The Minister said that reassignment came as there was a need for more qualified and professional Permanent Secretaries. This led to four former PSs undergoing training in capacity building under the Caribbean leadership programme.
“I want to debunk that nonsense that Sase Singh is going on with. He should examine things carefully before he continues on this charade of trying to create a bogie as if to say that this government is ethnically cleansing and only appointing certain people.”
In March 2017, several Permanent Secretaries were reassigned to different Ministries while others were relieved of their duties.
According to Minister Harmon, when the government took office their intention was to ensure that the quality of service provided by the public service was at a level which they can be proud of.
The Minister said that the Permanent Secretaries who are currently assigned to the various Ministries are a part of the new public service.
He said that on entering office, it was the immediate intention to elevate the standards in the public service.
Several things occurred. These included the launching of Commission of Inquiry to examine the conditions of the terms of services and services in general.
Already, some of the recommendations made by the COI have been implemented. At the level of pension to the public service, that is receiving special attention.
A public service college has been established with 50-plus persons now being trained.
With regards to the middle – between the entrance level to the Permanent Secretaries – several staffers are receiving the requisite training.
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