Richard Lord

A par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee is sug­gest­ing that the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ty Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (SC­SC) should be ei­ther dis­band­ed or giv­en the tools it needs to be ef­fec­tive.The SASC is re­spon­si­ble for hir­ing and dis­ci­plin­ing em­ploy­ees of statu­to­ry bod­ies and mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions.

Those were the two op­tions giv­en to the Par­lia­ment by a joint se­lect com­mit­tee chaired by In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Sub­has Ramkhelawan. The re­port was pre­sent­ed to the Sen­ate on Tues­day. The JSC held one meet­ing with of­fi­cials of the com­mis­sion on June 25, 2013.

Af­ter its crit­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of the is­sues, the JSC said in its twelfth re­port: "It ap­pears to us that the com­mis­sion is ham­pered by a num­ber of con­straints, in­clud­ing leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry gaps and loop­holes; out­dat­ed work­flow process­es and pro­ce­dures; in­ad­e­quate staffing; in­ad­e­quate ac­com­mo­da­tion; and a lack of ICT in­fra­struc­ture."The re­port said such con­straints have neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed the ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of the op­er­a­tions of the com­mis­sion.

It sug­gest­ed two op­tions. The first was to do away with the com­mis­sion al­to­geth­er on the ba­sis that it is ei­ther out­mod­ed, in­ef­fec­tive or re­dun­dant.The sec­ond op­tion was to give the com­mis­sion the nec­es­sary tools, re­sources and leg­isla­tive in­fra­struc­ture to en­able it to prop­er­ly, ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly ex­er­cise its pow­ers and func­tions.

The com­mit­tee said it was dis­ap­point­ed to know that an "ex­pe­di­tious and ef­fec­tive dis­ci­pli­nary process was not in place to deal with be­hav­iour­al is­sues, which may ex­ist through­out the var­i­ous au­thor­i­ties, in par­tic­u­lar chil­dren's homes."

It said while the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Act em­pow­ers the com­mis­sion to sus­pend an em­ploy­ee, pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the lag time be­tween the au­thor­i­ty's re­port on the mat­ter and the ini­ti­a­tion of dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion by the SASC may be too long, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it con­cerned sit­u­a­tions in­volv­ing chil­dren.The JSC re­port not­ed the SASC's abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ters in­volv­ing non-pub­lic of­fi­cers al­so ap­pears to be a chal­lenge.

It rec­om­mend­ed that the SASC should pur­sue the on­go­ing reg­u­la­to­ry re­form process with greater alacrity and should en­gage the Prime Min­is­ter and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for the pur­pose of es­tab­lish­ing de­fin­i­tive bench­marks for the ap­proval of rec­om­men­da­tions with re­spect to amend­ments to the reg­u­la­tions and al­so the grant­i­ng of del­e­gat­ed pow­ers to en­ti­ties.