Rhon­dor Dowlat

Pub­lic ser­vants said yes­ter­day they felt dis­re­spect­ed by the bouff from the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Clarence Ramb­harat.

Even the pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion, Wat­son Duke, thought the min­is­ter's state­ment to be one that would af­fect the morale of the pub­lic ser­vants but in the words of Christ said: "He is for­giv­en be­cause he does not know what he says."

Duke said he would chalk up the min­is­ter's state­ment to "ig­no­rance and lack of ex­pe­ri­ence."

"He should de­sist from mak­ing that state­ment again.

"Some say that peo­ple in of­fice (re­fer­ring to min­is­ters) do not know the brunt of chal­lenges that they are met with when they re­port to work on a dai­ly ba­sis," Duke said.

Ramb­harat said on Tues­day non-per­form­ing pub­lic ser­vants from the Land Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion were pre­vent­ing him from do­ing his job. He said he was frus­trat­ed by the lack of co-op­er­a­tion in that di­vi­sion as he tried to stamp out land grab­bing.

One work­er at the min­istry, who spoke on the con­di­tion anonymi­ty, said deal­ing with mem­bers of the pub­lic was not an easy task.

"Peo­ple feel that we are ma­gi­cians here at the min­istry and can get every­thing done at the same time for them but there are pro­ce­dures to fol­low. Al­so, there are on­ly so much work that one per­son can do when the day comes," the work­er said.

Duke said pub­lic ser­vants were the ones that felt the eco­nom­ic crunch and were the ones suf­fer­ing and "de­spite all that they still do a lot of the coun­try. They are the ones who got the coun­try to this point and have been push­ing the coun­try for­ward.

"Clarence needs to be care­ful of his words. It has not been since a year yet that he is in of­fice and all of a sud­den he be­comes an au­thor­i­ty to pub­lic ser­vants. It is in­ap­pro­pri­ate and self­ish of the min­is­ter," he said.

Asked if pub­lic ser­vants were get­ting the ne­ces­si­ties to car­ry out their du­ties, Duke replied:

"No. They are not pro­vid­ing the prop­er of­fice space, not pro­vid­ing prop­er in­fra­struc­ture, prop­er train­ing–as the pub­lic ser­vice acad­e­my stands as a white ele­phant–and al­so, the mo­ti­va­tion fac­tor, de­layed pay­ments and non-pay­ments make them feel they are not im­por­tant."

He said de­spite all that, pub­lic ser­vants con­tin­ued to make sac­ri­fices for the coun­try.

Asked to elab­o­rate on his state­ment, Ramb­harat said yes­ter­day he was specif­i­cal­ly ad­dress­ing the is­sue of com­plaints that phones were not be­ing an­swered and that peo­ple were not be­ing able to find out what was go­ing on with land trans­ac­tions.

"I was al­so ad­dress­ing the is­sue of en­force­ment of the re­trac­tions on use of lands for agri­cul­tur­al pur­pos­es on­ly.

"We are cur­rent­ly work­ing on a plan to re­build the ca­pac­i­ty of the Land Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion to process ap­pli­ca­tions and re­spond to the pub­lic in a time­ly man­ner. We are al­so deal­ing with the is­sue of en­force­ment and the need to strength­en our ca­pac­i­ty for en­force­ment," Ramb­harat said.

Asked if any ac­tion would be tak­en against idle work­ers or if they could face dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion, Ramb­harat said that dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion was a mat­ter for the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary at the min­istry.

"Ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion in­cludes find­ing oth­ers ways to get the work done," he added.