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Employment issues

May 03, 2018 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Auditor General should undertake an audit of the government to determine whether there are ‘phantoms’ on the government’s payrolls. This could help at least to allay fears that persons are being employed but are not physically present on the job or are being paid to do work which is not connected to their formal employment.
There have been criticisms, of recent, that a number of positions within government are being filled by persons who owe their employment to nepotism while genuine applicants are being denied work. It is said that these persons are benefitting from political favoritism, that is, they owe their positions to political connections.
The Annual Reports of the Office of the Auditor General have never reported on an audit of employees in the Public Service. This has been a serious shortcoming of that office considering the possibilities for skullduggery in employment in Government.
A basic audit should be undertaken to determine whether all those persons whose names appear on government payrolls are in fact employed. This should be done at both the central and regional levels. This will not answer the question of whether nepotism is involved but it will ensure that those who are paid, are being paid for being on the job.
The second type of audit, which should be undertaken is to ensure that persons are present on the job for a minimum of forty hours per week. Guyanese public service workers are notorious latecomers. Many of them come to work for 9 am and are first out at 4:30 pm. after spending two hours for lunch.
An audit of at least some Government agencies will determine whether Government is getting time for its money from its workforce. The fact that someone is on the job does not mean that he is being productive. But it is a start to ensure that at least those being paid are at work for the period for which they are being paid.
A report in the media indicated that some 4000 contractors are now on the fixed establishment of the public service. This means that they are now tenured public servants.
But how many of these workers have voluntarily agreed to being transferred to the public service and how many were forced to do so. This is something, which needs to be determined.
The government is not obligated to employ contract workers. But employee contracted before May 2015 should be forced to transfer to the public service. This would be a violation of their rights since they are being forced to make a decision that may be against their best interests.
And if 4,000 contract workers have been transferred, what about those have not been transferred? What criterion has been used for determining those contract employees who would not be transferred? These are important questions to be addressed.
There is no doubt that the government has been in a hurry to employ some of its supporters following the May 2015 Elections. But at least, it should be able to do so in a manner that is transparent and fair and which provides equal opportunities for persons applying for jobs.
This brings to another important question. That is the practice of advertising externally for senior positions in an entity. Now for example, there is a need for a General Manager in a state corporation.
In the good old days, if you were good enough to become the Deputy General Manager, then you ought to have been good enough to succeed the incumbent Manager when that person resigns or retires. But it seems as if it is now a practice for some person outside of the agency, department of corporation to be brought on board to fill the vacancy.
So one has to question the quality of second level management in the public sector and why certain positions have to be advertised externally when there are persons within the organization who are supposed to be capable of doing the job. If they were not capable, then why were they in senior positions in the first place?

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