Accountability Relationships in the Ministry of the Presidency

Jul 06, 2019 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

Article 107 of the Guyana constitution reads as follows:
“The President may assign to any Minister responsibility for any business of the Government of Guyana, including the administration of any department of Government, and shall be charged with all responsibility to any Minister; in respect of responsibility so charged, the President shall appoint a Minister or Parliamentary Secretary to be answerable to the National Assembly therefor on his or her behalf.
Provided that authority to exercise any power or discharge any duty that is conferred or imposed by any other provision of this Constitution or by any other law on any person or authority shall not be conferred under this article.”
It is just possible that management students may see the following as a case study of how to account to oneself in organisation.
In the earlier management construct one assumed that the Minister of State replaced the position of Parliamentary Secretary. Now it would appear that the position of Minister of State has been replaced by that of Director General – a descriptor which suggests a sufficiently wide area of responsibility and authority that may compete with the position of Minister.
In the meantime, it is understood that there is a Minister each assigned to the Public Service Department and that of Social Cohesion. It is not easy therefore to determine a decision-making hierarchy within the Ministry of the Presidency comprised as it is of Ministries, Departments, Programmes – totalling eight components, as set out in the approved Estimates of 2019 as follows:
– Policy Development & Administration (PD&A)
– Public Service Management (headed by a Minister) (PSM)
– Citizenship & Immigration Services (C&IS)
– Social Cohesion (SC)
– Environmental Management & Compliance Department (EM&C)
– Cultural Preservation & Conservation (CP&C)
– Youth (Y)
– Sport (S)
– Petroleum & Energy Management (P&EM)
In addition to the other standard public service job categories, there is a total of 475 contracted employees within the Ministry, the largest number of 217 being within Policy Development & Administration, and the smallest total of 3 within Petroleum & Energy Management.
For the more interested observer, the accompanying Table 1 shows the job distribution across these components of the Ministry, with the comparable manning levels of the Prime Minister’s office shown alongside, just for information.
Table 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Omitted: 1) Defence & National Security
2) Temporaries
(Presumably, the ‘administration’ of Environmental Management Compliance, and that of Sport is effected by Contracted Employees.)
Also one could not help being curious particularly about the positions included in the category described as ‘Administrative’. Interestingly, the relevant section of the approved Annual Estimates 2019, identify only the following – shown in Table 2.
Table 2
Administrative

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(*Note the difference from the descriptor ‘Citizenship & Immigration Services’ in Table 1.)
The absence of the manning of the other ‘programmes’ is not explained.
But even though a few of the Job Titles appear specific to this grouping, e.g. Cabinet Monitoring Officer, Manager Development Operations, Registrar General; once again it raises the much more fundamental issues as to the identifiable expertise, and the evaluation mechanism utilised for grading jobs across the Public Service.
For one, at the risk of repetition, the current job categorisation is worn out, after more than three decades of application – persistently ignoring all the changes in technology, for example.
There is the inexplicable insistence on the reference to ‘Personnel Management’ (since before Independence) and in this Ministry’s case, contradicted by the appointment of Junior Human Resources Management Consultant, who is regarded as a traditional public servant and placed at salary Grade 10, below the position of Principal Personnel Officer (Operations) at Grade 11 – in the same Public Service Department as the Chief personnel Officer at Grade 12.
It seems most critical to conduct a comprehensive review of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Public Service, to agree on an implementation plan for its recommendations to upgrade the Public Service, and with particular regard to the evaluation of related skills and competencies.
In the meantime, with a Ministry managed by a Director General, at least two Ministers and two Permanent Secretaries, some clarification of the accountability relationships is certainly necessary. For one, how does one explain the two Ministers concerned being responsible for Departments only, while their counterparts manage Ministries?
More critically, however, is the organisational mal-construct wherein these Ministries are contained within a super-Ministry headed by the President. At what stage therefore is the distinction made between the role of Minister and that of President?
Surely, it is a bureaucratic conundrum that invites comprehensive clarification; but should in no way be replicated.
Yours faithfully
E.B. John

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