Scholarships for Public Service

Aug 28, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

It is interesting to note that the Ministry of Public Service has rushed to offer scholarships to the University of Guyana in respect of some eighteen subjects, presumably with the intention of filling identified needs over various periodicities.
Presumably also, there has been a conclusion on the number of offers available to the respective programmes, following the conduct of an appropriate needs analysis.
Actually, the intervention serves to remind of the situation in Trinidad and Tobago, where UWI, St. Augustine Campus, long ago forged a close partnership with the private sector there, in order to agree to what extent the University could deliver programmes that would satisfy the human resources needs across industries and service providers.
It is in this context that one wonders whether any comparable discussion has taken place between the Ministry, University of Guyana and our Private Sector Commission; as well of course with entities related to Oil and Gas? Obviously, there must be some assurance of absorbability after graduation – of both current and future students.
What is disappointing however, is that there appears not to be any substantive internal investigation into the Human Resources Management needs across the Public Service, throughout which there is only the constipated position of Personnel Officer (at various levels). Nowhere else in the Public and Private Sector in the Caribbean could be found a vacancy for a Personnel Officer.
Be assured in the meantime that the static programme in Public Management at the University of Guyana would not suffice. Human Resources Management literature points to a much more dynamic appreciation of the value of the ‘human beings’, which we manage and the conscious effort, which we must make to raise the bar of their performance in the interest of organisational productivity as a whole. It must forge a relationship of equality. The practice actually works.
But hopefully a strategic plan for Human Resources Development in the Public Service would be forthcoming. Apart from reference to the 2016 Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Public Service, there appears to be an urgent need in the new social and economic dispensation, for a convention of appropriately qualified partners (local and overseas) to brainstorm and create a national human resources development plan for a realistically identified future, and of which relevant induction programmes must be components.
More than that, from all appearances/pronouncements, there may be need to dispense with the ‘fat cat’ syndrome, which could only be addressed by a very expert Job Evaluation exercise, preferably conducted by a selectee from invited competing Caricom experts. Such a comprehensive undertaking might well involve some informed restructuring of agencies and jobs across the service.
For example, it has always been a source of wonderment to the undersigned how an eminently specialist agency like the Guyana Public Hospital Corporation could be so illogically treated as Public Service, and its highly qualified medical employees be valued in Grades comparable to other ‘Technical & Craft Skilled’ as shown in the National Estimates.
It has always been inexplicable that all the Administrations have failed to recognise that the GPHC is the only Corporation included in the Annual Estimates approved by the National Assembly.
The opportunity should now be seized to restore it to its legal corporate status, with a proactive Board of Directors operating a more resourceful budget -aimed at well-paid specialists saving more lives, particularly in these pandemic times.
It would prove to be a substantial incentive to performance of individuals and teams, towards the health retrieval of patients and families.
In the meantime, will someone please attend to changing the job title ‘Typist/Clerk’. There is no such instrument available.

E.B. John
Consultant, Organisational Development
and Human Resources Management

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