Geisha Kow­lessar

The Pub­lic Ser­vice has grown mas­sive­ly in size but has not de­vel­oped. In fact it has sharply de­clined in qual­i­ty.Re­tired head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Regi­nald Du­mas said so at Wednes­day's lun­cheon host­ed by the Trinidad Union Club.Say­ing the Pub­lic Ser­vice had about 65,000 em­ploy­ees, Du­mas at­trib­uted its low qual­i­ty to a de­cline in so­ci­ety "as a whole" of which pub­lic ser­vants were a part.

That, how­ev­er, was not the on­ly rea­son."Ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive man­age­ment in and of the ser­vice is con­spic­u­ous­ly lack­ing and this de­fi­cien­cy is in­deed en­cour­aged by Sec­tion 85 (1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which en­trusts to the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to su­per­vise, and not to man­age."As a con­se­quence, min­is­ters, over time, while con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for gen­er­al di­rec­tion and con­trol, have in­cre­men­tal­ly been as­sum­ing the role of man­agers," Du­mas said.

He said there had been ex­am­ples of min­is­ters in the cur­rent and past ad­min­is­tra­tions pub­licly boast­ing of their skills at mi­cro-man­age­ment which was the last thing a min­is­ter ought to do.An­oth­er draw­back, Du­mas added, was the ab­sence of a com­put­erised sys­tem record­ing da­ta on pub­lic ser­vants and on the pub­lic ser­vice."Against such back­ground of ig­no­rance of your own em­ploy­ees, it is not sur­pris­ing that in­ap­pro­pri­ate ap­point­ments, pro­mo­tions and trans­fers are too fre­quent­ly made, and that suc­ces­sion plan­ning in the Pub­lic Ser­vice can be con­sid­ered nonex­is­tent," Du­mas said.On the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, Du­mas asked how of­ten prin­ci­pals sent re­ports of wrong­do­ing to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

"How of­ten, and with what ra­pid­i­ty, does the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary send his or her re­port to the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion? How quick­ly does the com­mis­sion re­spond?"If , in the fi­nal analy­sis, sanc­tions against the al­leged of­fend­er are tak­en, how ef­fec­tive are these sanc­tions?" Du­mas ques­tioned.in his over­all analy­sis, Du­mas said it was im­por­tant that ser­vice com­mis­sions re­mained, as they were es­sen­tial bod­ies, but they must be re­struc­tured and po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence must be re­moved.