Dr. Vincent Adams should decline the job

Oct 02, 2018 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

A circus is in town. It is located at Durban Park but is facing stiff competition from the seat of government across the road.

The imported circus is outclassed. The government is giving it a run for its money with draw-dropping stunts and incredible performances. Ministers are demonstrating unbelievable stealth while crossing the moral tightrope.

When it comes to magic, the government’s is a category of its own. Magicians make things appear and disappear but with the government circus, things are only disappearing. Three sugar estates have gone missing.

But it is the gravity-defying trapeze artists, which take the prize. Persons have been known to be catapulted off the political trapeze skywards into positions of power.

The amusement value is non-stop. Take two of its most recent appointments. The government appointed a top environmentalist as the head of its newly-formed Department of Energy. It has now appointed a top energy expert as the head of its Department of the Environment.

It is obvious to even the smallest child that the positions should have been reversed – the environmental expert should have been appointed as the Head of the Environmental Protection Agency and the energy expert as the head of the Department of Energy.

The political somersaults of the government are simply mindboggling. The APNU+AFC promised professionalism in the public sector but too many of its appointments have been political in nature.

There are some serious concerns about these recent appointments. It is certain that the post of head of the Department of Energy was not advertised. The person selected was hand-picked. Even some members of Cabinet were said to have been stunned by the appointment.

It is not certain whether the same applied for the position of the Environmental Protection Agency. But it does appear as if that appointment was a means of placating the appointee who had been highly tipped to be appointed as the head of the Department of Energy.

What is more disconcerting is that this highly qualified, experienced and well-regarded gentleman will now have to work, in the environmental sector under someone who really is no measure for him. The Environmental Protection Agency falls under the Department of the Environment and is subordinate to it. So what we now have is a head of the EPA who is more qualified, experienced and recognized than the person to whom he has to report.

On those grounds alone, Dr. Vincent Adams should decline the job. But there are other reasons why he should not accept the post offered. For one, he is a retiree and the appointment of a retiree to such a senior public office will demoralize the staff. The staff will feel that there is no way in which they can ever reach the pinnacle of the EPA since a political appointee will always be favoured for the top job.

The staff will not give of their best when they feel that they really cannot make a lifetime career out of their jobs because they can go only so far and no further. The staff will ask also whether no one under 60 years could have been found for that post.

The second reason why Dr. Adams should not accept the position is because he is displacing a young man. Mr. Khemraj Parsram is being bypassed for a position in which he has acted for almost one year. He should have had a fair shot at the job. How is the government going to retain the skills of its young professionals when it does this to them?

The third reason why Dr. Vincent Adams should not accept the job is because regardless of the merit of his appointment, through no fault of his, will create unease over ethnic imbalance in public appointments.

The government has been insensitive to the ethnic question when making public appointments over the past three years. Right now James Singh, the Head of the Forestry Commission and Dr. Mahender Sharma, the Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Energy Authority, are among a very tiny minority of East Indians who are heading government agencies.

Most of the top appointments made by government to head public offices have been non-Indians. Following so soon after the sidelining of David Ramnarine as Commissioner of Police, the sidestepping of Khemraj Parsram is a disturbing development.

The government needs to stop and take a hard look at its act. There is far too much juggling, acrobatics, somersaults, vaulting and magic within the government. Running a country is no circus.

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