Public service reform
The government announced last week that it will early next year offer temporary, unqualified public servants in salary scales one to five, the lowest scales, a voluntary termination package of one year's salary and a training grant. The salaries used to calculate the package will be the considerably increased salaries in place in the year 2000. Temporary, unqualified public servants are those who were employed though they did not satisfy the minimum entry requirements. They are usually given eighteen months within which to acquire the relevant qualifications. Dr Roger Luncheon, the secretary to the cabinet, who made the announcement said he did not know how many public servants fall within these categories. Data was now being compiled by the Public Service Ministry, the Public Service Commission and the Ministry of Finance. There are 8,966 public servants in scales one to five he said and he estimated several thousand may be affected. The award of the Armstrong Arbitration Tribunal of a 3l.06% increase for public servants this year to be followed by a 26.6% increase next year has put the government under some financial pressure and has apparently led it to revise rather rapidly its plans for public service reform. Plans for such reform have been in place since l99l under the then Hoyte government as it was since then recognised that the public service was overmanned and underskilled. The basic plan was to reduce it in size and to improve the skill levels. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) this year agreed to fund a technical co-operation programme of US$800,000 to finance consultancies to design the public sector reform project. Those studies would have determined the revised size of the public service, how many ministries there needed to be and how many staff for such ministries and government agencies, the quality of staff required, how much they should be paid and how many needed to be retrenched. It was further envisaged that to facilitate the implementation of the programme after it had been prepared the IDB would lend a further US$30 million. However, perhaps as a result of recent developments, the World Bank offered two months ago to provide the government with funding of US$l0 million to go ahead with the voluntary package that has just been announced though there was as yet no study in place to indicate how many people would be affected. Reports indicate that further debt relief under the Cologne Initiative and improved Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility terms may have been held out by the bank as an incentive. The government has therefore jumped the gun on the IDB project which will presumably have to be re-negotiated. There can be no doubt that public sector reform is required. The Hoyte government had accepted this and the present government accepts it. There is some concern, however, as to how the present proposal will be implemented and what effect it will have. Dr Luncheon said the public service unions have been informed of the government's decision and have been invited to sit on a tripartite committee with the government and the private sector to monitor the voluntary termination. It is certainly helpful that those who agree to leave will be given a year's salary. At a very rough calculation, if say 4000 people agree to withdraw and they receive an average of $300,000 the payout involved would be about $l2 billion. Most of these people are unskilled and underqualified by definition. The problem will be for them to find alternative employment, failing which they will swell the ranks of the unemployed. At the end of the day the overriding problem remains, as it has been for many years, the need for more investment and economic growth to provide more jobs. A smaller, more efficient and better qualified public service is an idea everyone will support. It will enable those still in the service to be paid better and make the service competitive with the private sector. It will enable, hopefully, a better service to be provided which will be conducive to development. The problem will be how to help those who lose their jobs in the restructuring process and accept the termination package. In this regard, much more information is needed about the proposed training grants. For which institutions will these grants by provided, what courses will they cover, will they lead to a reasonable prospect of employment? The voluntary termination project requires careful planning and monitoring. What will happen to the anticipated IDB loan of US$30 million now that government has embarked on another project? The Minister of Finance should explain how these projects fit in with each other, if at all, and give more information on the proposed training grants and the project generally.
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