Gail Alexan­der

The en­tire Par­lia­ment should apol­o­gise for the Clause 34 fi­as­co, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan said yes­ter­day. Speak­ing in yes­ter­day's bud­get de­bate, Seep­er­sad-Bachan said, "What hap­pened with Clause 34 all of us are re­spon­si­ble and all of us should have got­ten up and apol­o­gised."

But when PNM?MPs start­ed loud­ly re­mark­ing on her state­ment, PP?MPs re­tort­ed, "Move on, move on!" Seep­er­sad-Bachan, how­ev­er, did not con­tin­ue speak­ing about the is­sue. She then de­tailed plans for re­struc­tur­ing the Pub­lic Ser­vice, which Cab­i­net had ap­proved. She said some as­pects will be im­ple­ment­ed in sev­er­al min­istries in a pi­lot project.

This trans­forms the ser­vice from a tri­an­gu­lar sys­tem-bot­tom-heavy, with cler­i­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive staff on the bot­tom-to a di­a­mond-shaped sys­tem with broad lead­er­ship sys­tems at the top, mid­dle-man­age­ment im­ple­men­tors and a small­er mul­ti-skilled work­force at the bot­tom. She said the min­istry had so­licit­ed views from all sec­tors of the ser­vice on the is­sue.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said though there had been com­plaints about con­tract of­fi­cers, there were 200 posts in 1990, but 1,000 con­tract posts in 2010. She said stan­dard­i­s­a­tion was need­ed and that 26 types of po­si­tions from HR to com­mu­ni­ca­tion were con­tract­ed. She said oth­er jobs to be con­tract­ed range from IT and fi­nan­cial to au­dit­ing and In­for­ma­tion.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said some con­tract of­fi­cers would be able to ap­ply for per­ma­nent posts. Cab­i­net will ap­prove em­ploy­ment and con­tracts will be draft­ed by the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary based on ad­vice from the chief state so­lic­i­tor, she added. She said the process for schol­ar­ships were open and trans­par­ent and no longer in­volved a let­ter from the prime min­is­ter as hap­pened un­der the PNM.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said the min­istry, by re­mov­ing out­dat­ed re­quire­ments, had cleared up a back­log of peo­ple who had act­ed for years and were now con­firmed. She said the South Wa­ter­front project would be­gin in 2013 based on the pub­lic/pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ship con­cept and would have as­pects that would cater to en­ter­tain­ment and cul­ture, linked to south Trinidad her­itage sites.