H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – What happened to our public servants? 

Jul 21, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Though in the thousands public servants are dying by a thousand cuts.  Despite their numbers, I say they are a dying breed, definitely a species of limited utility.  It is more accurate to describe the condition of public servants in Guyana as that of suppressed utility, convenient photo opportunity, particularly when the color scheme supports PPP Government claims.  The questions stir, settle down, and then slip into the consciousness again: what happened to our public servants, senior ones?  To where have they disappeared unwillingly?  To where have they been consigned smartly?  These questions, and the concerns surrounding them, are not going anywhere.

I look around, read, note the developments occurring, compliments of various ministerial portfolios, some of which are vast, and which are usually in tens, or hundreds, or thousands of millions nowadays.  The projects involve roads and bridges, schools and examination results, hospital facilities, equipment, and medicines, or security and fire safety.  Those are only a snapshot of the business of government (and the people) that has been started with much fanfare, Technicolor, and surround sound.  Bose and Nakamichi would be proud of the range and effects.  But the questions persist, in this blur of major developments and activities, where are the senior public servants?

I cast about for the Chief Works or Chief Hydraulics Officer, and there is only the Minister of Public Works.  When he is consumed by other attractions, there is always the able junior minister.  They make a good tag team.  But where is the Chief Roads Officer (or 21st century title now used)?  Why is it almost always the mug of this minister or that, all honorable servants of this superrich society, of course?  It would be a positive to see, hear, and learn from the Chief Education Officer, or the Permanent Secretary of this or the other ministry appearing and blessing natives.  With words of wisdom when one of the mega projects in the pipeline makes its way into the media. It would be more than a positive to confirm that they are still around, can speak, actually think, and are gainfully employed.  Emphasis on gainfully, meaning, working in the interests of the people.

I have a decent understanding of human nature, so there is appreciation for the ego and self-love of men and women in high offices.  Need I mention the narcissism of the king of them all…?  But microphone and camera are not pigsties to be hogged by ministers to reinforce political messages, such as it is we, the PPP, who are doing our duty, while dealing with the money for the citizenry.  I urge all to pay the closest attention to that little construction of mine: ‘dealing with the money….’  This is where public servants, and the more senior the better, the more comforting, are worth their weight in platinum and rare earth minerals.  Combined.

No more ‘Yes, Minister’ we will find a way [somehow] to make what is demanded work’.  Rather, the chief technician, the chief statistician, and the chief administrative and Chief accounting and chief operating officers of ministries are duty bound to ministers to steer them in the right direction.  These are the rules.  No, no, it can’t be to hell with them, sir (or madam minister).  Ministers can be their own worst enemies, need to have their hands held, their feet slowed, and their heads straightened.  This is where permanent secretaries come into their own, actually delivering the best service to the people.  In so doing, they protect the public purse, they observe both letter and spirit of what is clean and lacking corruption.  It would be appalling, the depths of official depravity for any Permanent Secretary to be a participant in schemes that harm the reputation of the PPP Government, or another; most of all the dignity of the people.  Whether he or she does that from the office, on the road, or online, is irrelevant: it is still criminal, either as an author, or as an aider and abettor, and a protector.

In my book, senior public servants have a huge, very vital role to perform, many of them; and almost all such roles is to guide the minister to righteous pathways.  Unfortunately, from my own observations, the conclusion is that ministers are permanent secretaries, ministers are engineers, and ministers are educators, though many of them are dumber than oil drums.  As rich, yes; but mostly, definitely denser.

I recall a nationally known medical practitioner, who is tightly aligned with the PPP, saying to me that there will be many young people and they will not stick any nonsense.  I point to the environment as it is, and all I can present are the impotent, the willing participants, and those who have lost mind, hearing, and truth that they were maybe once theirs.  When the PPP Government, meaning the one supreme master, brought in the young, something cunning was delivered.  There was lowering the age of senior public servants, and simultaneously lowering the IQ level, degrading of levels of conscientiousness, and destroying the levels of needed principles.  It is why the only principals seen parading around projects are the panjandrums pretending at ministers. Oh, Guyana!

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, public, servants, thousand

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