The Government is on a High-Carb Diet

Sep 21, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

---

Kaieteur News – I have always been skeptical of diets. I tried one once, but it did not last long. Now I find myself fascinated by the government’s new diet—not the keto, not the paleo, but the “bureaucratic bloat” diet, where instead of trimming fat, you add ministers, advisers and deputy permanent secretaries like butter to bread.

The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, which in Burnham days could be a desk with a filing cabinet tucked in some corner of the Ministry of Education, now has two ministers. Two! This is not a desk anymore; it’s a fully furnished Ministry with its own Budget and two ministers in tow.

Apparently, doubling-up is now the new form of efficiency. The Ministry of Local Government, a ministry so modest that it once flew beneath radar also has two ministers. One is even someone who was once a substantive Minister.

And this ministry now has both a Permanent Secretary and a Deputy Permanent Secretary, and rumour has it an office for a former Minister. I don’t know why we need Deputy Permanent Secretaries. Maybe they’re like understudies in a Broadway show. If the Permanent Secretary falls ill, the Deputy can rush on stage, arms flailing, to approve memos with heroic urgency.

But wait, there’s more. The Ministry of Agriculture also has its own Deputy Permanent Secretary. That’s a lot of deputies for a ministry whose greatest achievement of late is ensuring that rice doesn’t rebel and sugar doesn’t stage a coup. Why all the deputies? If this were the Wild West, I’d understand—sheriffs needed deputies. But in a ministry, unless cows have begun rustling tractors, I’m not convinced.

And then there are the advisers. Retired ministers, rather than retreating to write their memoirs now hover around their old ministries, haunting the corridors like political ghosts. They shadow the new ministers, whispering, “In my day, the air conditioning worked better.” These advisers are less about advice and more about real estate—they occupy offices, chairs, and most importantly, the public purse.

Now, let’s talk about the newest character on this stage: the Director General. This position pops up everywhere like mushrooms after rain. The Ministry of Agriculture once had one, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs once had one who was considered the Chief Diplomat.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is my favourite example. In Britain, the Foreign Secretary is the Foreign Minister. Here, we have both. Which means we effectively have two foreign ministers, like Noah’s Ark but with politicians instead of animals. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education, which oversees literacy in a country that desperately needs it, gets one minister. One! If this were a marriage, the Ministry of Education would be filing for neglect.

The Public Service Ministry also now has a new tagline— “Implementation and Efficiency.” Efficiency! This is like naming a sumo wrestler “Slim.” Efficiency, in any normal dictionary, means doing more with less. In government, it now means doing less with more and announcing it with a press release.

To top it off, we have a brand-new Ministry: Aviation and Public Utilities. I imagine this is a Frankenstein’s monster of water taps and airplanes, where air traffic controllers also monitor your electricity bill. This ministry exists presumably because Public Works was stripped of aviation and Housing stripped of water. And yet—both Public Works and Housing still have two ministers each. It’s like cutting off the arms of a chair and then giving it extra cushions.

The most powerful position of all, however, is not the Foreign Minister, the Director General, or even the Deputy to the Deputy Permanent Secretary, but the exalted figure of the Minister without Portfolio. This is a minister who, by some cosmic stroke of genius, has no ministry. His job is to hover above it all, like a hanging ornament. The Minister without Portfolio enjoys the singular advantage of presiding over nothing. And in a government where responsibility is radioactive, being in charge of nothing is the safest, most powerful position of all.

What we are witnessing is not governance but gastronomy. The political directorate is fattening like geese destined for foie gras. It is a government so bloated that one worries whether State House should install reinforced floors. If efficiency is the goal, then surely the leaner ministries—Education, Natural Resources—are the role models. But instead, they remain starved of additional ministers while Culture, Sport, and Local Government gorge themselves on political calories.

This is not merely bureaucratic obesity—it is bureaucratic art. Each appointment is like a new brushstroke on a canvas of excess. And soon, if the trend continues, we will need a Ministry of Ministers, staffed by two ministers, a Permanent Secretary, a Deputy, three advisers, and a Director General. Their job will be to keep track of all the other ministers, who by then will outnumber the mosquitoes in the rainy season.

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

---

• Burnham, High-Carb Diet, Peeping Tom, PPPC

---