Shal­iza Has­sanali

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs Fitzger­ald Hinds yes­ter­day cau­tioned the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion De­part­ment (SCD) that for­mu­lat­ing its own Ser­vice Com­mis­sion in To­ba­go can present se­vere chal­lenges for the is­land.

Hinds raised the is­sue dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (amend­ment) on the To­ba­go Self-Gov­ern­ment Bill chaired by Camille Robin­son-Reg­is who sought ex­pert opin­ion of the SCD on the pro­posed es­tab­lish­ment of a To­ba­go civ­il ser­vice and ser­vice com­mis­sion.

The ob­jec­tive of the JSC, Robin­son-Reg­is said, was to do what was best for the uni­tary state of T&T.

At­tend­ing the JSC at Tow­er D, Port-of-Spain, was the To­ba­go Fo­rum of Po­lit­i­cal Par­ties, which in­clud­ed To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles and leader of Plat­form of Truth Ho­choy Charles.

“When we looked at it ini­tial­ly we were of the view that there seemed to be...or there may have been some is­sues as to how it would op­er­ate most ef­fec­tive­ly. But we want this to op­er­ate smooth­ly,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.

It was re­vealed that in 2009 the SCD opened an of­fice in To­ba­go.

How­ev­er, SCP’s act­ing deputy di­rec­tor of per­son­nel ad­min­is­tra­tion Mar­cia Pile O’ Brady stat­ed that the of­fice had to close its doors due to the eco­nom­ic down­turn, while they had had no records and IT ser­vice.

Hinds ques­tioned if the es­tab­lish­ment of the two en­ti­ties would meet the ex­pec­ta­tions of To­bag­o­ni­ans.

“I sus­pect it will not. Be­cause the ex­plana­to­ry note of this bill which re­flects the am­bi­tions and de­sires ex­pressed from the To­ba­go Fo­rum says in the ex­plana­to­ry note, among oth­er things, that there should be a To­ba­go is­land gov­ern­ment, a To­ba­go Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and a To­ba­go Civ­il Ser­vice.”

Hinds said these mat­ters can be very emo­tive. He said the SCD’s move to set up an of­fice re­sult­ed in is­sues, not­ing that such prob­lems al­so ex­ist in Trinidad.

“I am rais­ing that to demon­strate that it is now ac­cept­ed in T&T... and this for­mu­la­tion of the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion has its own chal­lenges. The con­cept of the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion has pre­sent­ed our coun­try with se­vere chal­lenges from the very start and they per­sist to this very day.”

Hind said to con­tem­plate repli­cat­ing a Ser­vice Com­mis­sion in To­ba­go may be dif­fi­cult know­ing that the one in T&T has been prob­lem­at­ic and un­der re­view.

“Be­cause we are go­ing to be re­peat­ing some­thing that there is a gen­er­al feel­ing has not been serv­ing this coun­try in the way it ought to or it was ex­pect­ed to when it was es­tab­lished in 1962.”

Hinds said Con­sti­tu­tion­al lawyers would have to work out a bet­ter way of ad­min­is­ter­ing To­ba­go’s af­fairs, giv­en the lessons we have learnt from the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion in T&T.

He ar­gued that deep thought was re­quired in go­ing for­ward, stat­ing if this was not done we would cre­ate long-term prob­lems for T&T. Robin­son-Reg­is agreed with Hinds that the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s op­er­a­tions need­ed to be ex­am­ined.

Giv­ing his views, Kelvin Charles said what has emerged “was the pos­si­bil­i­ty for the cre­ation of a Ser­vice Com­mis­sion” which would re­quire con­se­quen­tial amend­ments to the reg­u­la­tions and leg­is­la­tion. He said they would pro­pose a mech­a­nism to mod­ernise the THA’s hu­man re­sources.

Notwith­stand­ing the cur­rent flaws that ex­ist in the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, Charles said: “We feel very strong­ly in re­spect of ad­min­is­ter­ing the af­fairs of the is­land... that if this is the best mod­el at this time, then we would need to have that mod­el.”