The flash­ing turn sig­nal was first used in the 1938 Buick mo­tor car. Yet, to pass the T&T Dri­ver’s Test in 2022, the stu­dent dri­ver must roll down the win­dow and demon­strate com­pe­tence in hand sig­nalling. I use this as a metaphor for the long-out­mod­ed sys­tems em­ployed in our T&T pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion, with re­sul­tant low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and cit­i­zen con­sumer dis­sat­is­fac­tion. This mat­ters be­cause ul­ti­mate­ly pub­lic sec­tor com­pen­sa­tion can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from is­sues of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. It is es­pe­cial­ly rel­e­vant now as pub­lic ser­vants are un­der­stand­ably and right­ful­ly seek­ing a liv­ing wage. They ex­pect busi­ness as usu­al in wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, that is, an in­crease high­er than the rate of in­fla­tion dur­ing the pe­ri­od cov­ered by the col­lec­tive agree­ment. The world, in­clud­ing Trinidad & To­ba­go, has en­tered a pe­ri­od of high in­fla­tion not ex­pe­ri­enced for 40 years, es­ti­mat­ed lo­cal­ly at ap­prox­i­mate­ly sev­en per cent per an­num. Any wage in­creas­es less than that, say pub­lic ser­vants and their unions, would amount to a salary cut!

For many decades, T&T’s high­ly pro­duc­tive en­er­gy sec­tor fund­ed dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly high stan­dards of liv­ing in its non-en­er­gy sec­tors, in­clud­ing the pub­lic ser­vice. How­ev­er, pro­duc­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor has been in de­cline since 2010, masked tem­porar­i­ly by ex­tra­or­di­nary re­cent in­creas­es in en­er­gy prices. Nat­ur­al gas prices have shot up from pre-pan­dem­ic $2.50 mcf to $8 mcf to­day. The re­sul­tant fis­cal wind­fall has many claimants. For ex­am­ple, ne­glect­ed road re­pair, debt re­pay­ment in­clud­ing VAT re­funds; cook­ing gas, trans­port, and elec­tric­i­ty sub­si­dies; and in­creas­es in pub­lic sec­tor pay.

In such dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances, gov­ern­ments usu­al­ly ‘fudge’ a set­tle­ment among claimants, dic­tat­ed in part by per­ceived po­lit­i­cal strength and the vo­cif­er­ous­ness of their claims. The un-sus­tain­abil­i­ty of these set­tle­ments is bru­tal­ly ex­posed over time. I cite the 1980s, an­oth­er pe­ri­od of en­er­gy sec­tor de­cline. In the build up to the 1986 gen­er­al elec­tion, the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) de­mand­ed a 15 per cent salary in­crease. By 1987, the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances were such that the Gov­ern­ment was com­pelled to im­pose a ten per cent salary cut. More re­cent­ly, from 2014-2018 Bar­ba­dos’ dire fis­cal sit­u­a­tion dic­tat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment lay off al­most 4,000 pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 per cent. It has been proven world­wide that on­ly sus­tained high pro­duc­tiv­i­ty growth of the whole econ­o­my can in­su­late against such un­sat­is­fac­to­ry out­comes.

In­ter­na­tion­al com­par­isons, though not con­tex­tu­alised, can be in­struc­tive. The share of pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ment as a per­cent­age of the to­tal labour force is 25.9 per cent in T&T; 12.5 per cent in Brazil; 12 per cent in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and 11.8 per cent in Mex­i­co. In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, Sin­ga­pore sets en­vi­able stan­dards for high pay and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Sin­ga­pore’s pub­lic ser­vants are on­ly 4.5 per cent of their to­tal labour force and are very well paid com­pared with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s. The base salary of a Sin­ga­pore Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary is just un­der $300,000 (TT) per month, with ad­di­tion­al per­for­mance-re­lat­ed pay ben­e­fits. A T&T Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary re­ceives by com­par­i­son a base salary of just un­der $50,000 (TT) per month with min­i­mal per­for­mance ac­count­abil­i­ty.

How­ev­er, there are ma­jor pro­duc­tiv­i­ty dif­fer­ences be­tween these two coun­tries that ex­plain the salary dif­fer­en­tials. In the first in­stance, Sin­ga­pore em­ploys 66 per cent few­er pub­lic ser­vants per capi­ta than T&T. More­over, Sin­ga­pore’s GDP per capi­ta is US$59,000 com­pared with T&T’s US$18,000. Fur­ther, it should not es­cape our at­ten­tion that over many years of tight fi­nances, the T&T Gov­ern­ment has stuck to a pol­i­cy of ‘no re­trench­ment’ in the pub­lic ser­vice.

In my own pub­lic life, I have wit­nessed a con­tin­u­ing in­abil­i­ty to im­ple­ment nec­es­sary pub­lic sec­tor re­form. I was a mem­ber of Patrick Man­ning’s first Cab­i­net in 1991 when the PM led a de­ter­mined ef­fort in re­form. The man­age­ment ex­pert, the late Gor­don Drap­er, was re­cruit­ed in­to the Cab­i­net to lead this mis­sion of pub­lic ser­vice re­form. Gor­don con­fessed that the re­mote Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sions and their con­sti­tu­tion­al lock un­der­mined his ef­forts to build ac­count­abil­i­ty in­to the Ser­vice.

Sim­i­lar­ly, I wit­nessed a sys­tem in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries in which our tal­ent­ed young na­tion­als were re­cruit­ed on short-term con­tracts. In­evitably, many of the bright­est re­cruits sought job sta­bil­i­ty at in­ter­na­tion­al firms, and their ser­vice and ex­per­tise are now lost to the coun­try.

The 2020 Road Map Com­mit­tee Re­port placed con­sid­er­able em­pha­sis on the digi­ti­sa­tion of pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion (The Es­ton­ian Mod­el) to mod­ernise and im­prove pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the pub­lic ser­vice. Im­ple­men­ta­tion has been steady, but too slow to meet the ur­gency of to­day. My main point here is that the forces of fis­cal grav­i­ty, the need for pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains and the de­mands for high­er wages are now in stark con­fronta­tion.

The present in­sti­tu­tion­al struc­tures were not de­signed to pro­mote pro­duc­tiv­i­ty or ef­fi­cien­cy in ser­vice de­liv­ery to the pub­lic. Col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, con­cil­i­a­tion and an In­dus­tri­al Court serve large­ly to re­cy­cle di­min­ish­ing pe­tro­le­um rents. These in­sti­tu­tions can­not in the long term guar­an­tee the de­liv­ery of a liv­ing wage. A new In­dus­tri­al Pol­i­cy is re­quired: made up of sev­er­al com­po­nents such as new di­rec­tions for the econ­o­my with high pro­duc­tiv­i­ty growth po­ten­tial; up­skilling of thou­sands of pub­lic ser­vants; na­tion­al adop­tion of ac­count­able work prac­tices fea­tur­ing re­wards for per­for­mance. We al­so need to end elit­ist priv­i­lege where­by, for ex­am­ple, doc­tors “ful­ly” em­ployed in the pub­lic ser­vice are al­so al­lowed their pri­vate prac­tices.

In a few weeks, Trinidad and To­ba­go will cel­e­brate 60 years of In­de­pen­dence. Sure­ly, that is time enough to re-ex­am­ine some of the pro­vi­sions of our In­de­pen­dence Con­sti­tu­tion and the re­lat­ed in­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments that shack­le suc­cess and in­no­va­tion. I would like to hope that such a re-ex­am­i­na­tion be guid­ed by an ethos of sin­cere col­lab­o­ra­tion rather than the pre­vail­ing pos­ture of hos­tile con­fronta­tion. Such a change in at­ti­tude would be wor­thy of cel­e­bra­tion.