Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day as­sured that since her ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sumed of­fice in April last year, no pub­lic ser­vants have been dis­missed.

“I have not sent one home, not one,” she de­clared, adding that she did not have the ju­ris­dic­tion to do so, as that falls un­der the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC).

In­stead, she urged the PSC to re­ward those will­ing to work and to end the long-stand­ing prac­tice of of­fi­cers serv­ing in “act­ing” po­si­tions for years.

“Some of you should get an Os­car nom­i­na­tion, be­cause you’ve been act­ing for so long,” she quipped, call­ing on the PSC to reg­u­larise ap­point­ments.

Speak­ing at a recog­ni­tion cer­e­mo­ny for Natasha Bar­row’s ap­point­ment as head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed claims her Gov­ern­ment had ter­mi­nat­ed staff, in­sist­ing that “99 per cent of those things are not true.”

“Nine to ten months ago, April last year, we formed the Gov­ern­ment, and PS Bar­row was there, so I in­her­it­ed PS Bar­row. She was an act­ing PS and in those nine to ten months, the tran­si­tion has been so tremen­dous that I think, to­geth­er with her staff, her team, you all have sup­port­ed this Gov­ern­ment very, very well,” Per­sad Bisses­sar in­di­cat­ed.

In con­grat­u­lat­ing Bar­row on her ap­point­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar praised her lead­er­ship dur­ing the tran­si­tion pe­ri­od and ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the pub­lic ser­vice, un­der her guid­ance, would con­tin­ue to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s man­date.

The Prime Min­is­ter em­pha­sised that mod­erni­sa­tion of the pub­lic ser­vice must be an­chored in per­for­mance man­age­ment, da­ta-dri­ven de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and con­tin­u­ous train­ing. She said many com­plaints from cit­i­zens stem not from in­ef­fi­cien­cy alone but from poor cus­tomer ser­vice.

“Some­times the com­plaints are just com­mon cour­tesy, the treat­ment of per­sons in these of­fices,” she said, urg­ing of­fi­cers to treat mem­bers of the pub­lic as they would their own fam­i­ly.

She sug­gest­ed to Bar­row that ad­di­tion­al train­ing be of­fered in han­dling the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing pe­ri­ods of high de­mand such as the re­cent surge at li­cens­ing of­fices.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so ad­dressed con­cerns about con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, stress­ing that cab­i­net notes “do not leak by ac­ci­dent.” She ex­plained that every Cab­i­net de­ci­sion is for­ward­ed to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 81 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, en­sur­ing that the Head of State is kept in­formed of gov­ern­ment busi­ness on a week­ly ba­sis. This, she added, un­der­scores her ad­min­is­tra­tion’s com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy.

Re­flect­ing on her vi­sion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar called for a mod­ern, pro­fes­sion­al, and ac­count­able pub­lic ser­vice sup­port­ed by tech­nol­o­gy and im­proved ICT sys­tems.