Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The coun­try should brace for a to­tal shut­down of Pub­lic Ser­vice op­er­a­tions on March 27 ac­cord­ing to pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Wat­son Duke yes­ter­day. Duke is call­ing on Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards to re­voke the ap­point­ments of chair­man of the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, Christo­pher Thomas and Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DPA) Glo­ria Ed­wards-Joseph for their "in­ef­fi­cien­cies and back­ward­ness." He is de­mand­ing that the two of­fi­cials "leave the Pub­lic Ser­vice alone."

Duke ad­dressed the me­dia at a news con­fer­ence at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), South Quay fol­low­ing a meet­ing with Hous­ing and En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. The two met to dis­cuss mat­ters re­lat­ing to the Forestry Di­vi­sion.

Scores of work­ers from the di­vi­sion staged a noisy protest out­side the HDC while the meet­ing was in progress. They are up in arms against the es­tab­lish­ment of a pro­posed Forestry Au­thor­i­ty. Duke said: "We in­tend to take our plight to the chair­man and the DPA who are to­tal­ly re­spon­si­ble for this lev­el of at­tack against the Civ­il Ser­vice." He claimed they were de­stroy­ing the Civ­il Ser­vice and that "they are at the top and do not know what they are do­ing." Duke said there are 11,000 va­can­cies in the Ser­vice need­ing to be filled. He said: "We are ask­ing for a to­tal shut­down on March 27 and on that day, Glo­ria Ed­wards-Joseph and Christo­pher Thomas will have to give an­swers to the mem­bers we rep­re­sent as to why 11,000 va­can­cies are still out­stand­ing.

"We are not tak­ing "no" for an an­swer and we will be call­ing up­on the Pres­i­dent (Richards) to re­voke their ap­point­ments." Duke ques­tioned their in­de­pen­dence. He said he will ask gov­ern­ment to re­move the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and set up an Au­thor­i­ty. He said the com­mis­sion needs "fix­ing." Mean­while, Mooni­lal gave an as­sur­ance to the PSA that no work­er will be re­trenched or dis­missed should plans for a Forestry Au­thor­i­ty go ahead. Mooni­lal said: "In all that we con­tem­plate in the tran­si­tion, it will in­volve no dis­missal, lay-off or re­trench­ment. "We al­so raised the is­sue of trade union suc­ces­sion, mean­ing that the work­ers in a new Au­thor­i­ty that is to come on board will have the pro­tec­tion of their trade union."