Pub­lic Ser­vices’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste is urg­ing the coun­try to “wake up” and take note of how Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Kurt Mey­er was trans­ferred from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, less than two weeks af­ter he was crit­i­cised on a pub­lic plat­form by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

On Oc­to­ber 26, Dr Row­ley spoke about an un­named PS be­ing a hin­drance to achiev­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s Bud­get Day promise to pay pub­lic ser­vants back­pay be­fore Christ­mas 2023. At that Oc­to­ber 26 news brief­ing, Row­ley, us­ing TTUTA’s back­pay as an ex­am­ple, said the PS wrote to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and said those pay­ments can­not be fa­cil­i­tat­ed un­til May 2024.

Row­ley said that would not be tol­er­at­ed by the Cab­i­net and the Gov­ern­ment would do what must be done. The Prime Min­is­ter said he had al­so com­plained to the head of the pub­lic ser­vice, who is al­so the PS in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert sub­se­quent­ly re­vealed the PM was re­fer­ring to the PS in the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry. He al­so as­sured pub­lic ser­vants would re­ceive their back­pay by Christ­mas as promised, adding suf­fi­cient re­sources to as­sist min­istries pro­cess­ing the back­pay would be pro­vid­ed if need be.

On Wednes­day (No­vem­ber 8), Mey­er pro­ceed­ed on va­ca­tion leave and a new as­sign­ment will re­port­ed­ly be await­ing him when he re­turns from leave, me­dia re­ports yes­ter­day re­vealed.

This se­ries of events is of great con­cern to Bap­tiste.

“Let me be clear, I want work­ers to get their back­pay. That is not the is­sue. The is­sue is the whole is­sue of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence. The re­al­i­ty is that pub­lic of­fi­cials ought to be en­ti­tled to ex­er­cise their du­ties with­out fear of reper­cus­sions from the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate. That is one of the con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards you have by be­ing a pub­lic of­fi­cer, be­ing in­su­lat­ed from the politi­cians, that is the whole idea of be­ing a pub­lic ser­vant, you serve the pub­lic not the ad­min­is­tra­tion,” Bap­tiste told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Bap­tiste called the move a “blur­ring of the lines and an as­ser­tion of the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate”.

“A pub­lic of­fi­cer, sim­ply for ex­press­ing a fac­tu­al sce­nario, is now be­ing vic­timised by the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate. That is now wrong, and this coun­try has to wake up. And some­body needs to stand up and say enough is enough, we can­not cre­ate an au­toc­ra­cy or dic­ta­tor­ship at its very best. And the pub­lic of­fi­cer is be­ing pun­ished by sim­ply stat­ing a fac­tu­al sit­u­a­tion,” Bap­tiste ar­gued.

Sec­tion 121 6(a) of the Con­sti­tu­tion speaks to the trans­fer of a per­ma­nent sec­re­tary. It states: “the pow­er to make ap­point­ments on trans­fer to the fol­low­ing of­fices shall vest in the Prime Min­is­ter-a) any of­fice of the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary from one such of­fice to an­oth­er such of­fice car­ry­ing the same salary.”

Calls to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly went unan­swered yes­ter­day.

An­a­lyst—‘It’s con­cern­ing’

How­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said in the ab­sence of more in­for­ma­tion, it would be dif­fi­cult to la­bel the move as bla­tant po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence or vic­tim­i­sa­tion. But he con­ced­ed the pub­lic should be con­cerned.

“From the looks of it, that is the way it looks, but not un­til we have any in­for­ma­tion that is the case can we say some­thing on it. Where does it leave us? We need to be cau­tious that if the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to in­ter­fere in the pub­lic ser­vice and in the op­er­a­tions of the pub­lic ser­vice, whether or not they are go­ing to do so fair­ly and with­out bias. I can­not say for sure. I can tell you one thing, if I tell you to­day that there was mal­ice, I am al­most cer­tain the PM is go­ing to say I am be­ing ma­li­cious be­cause I don’t have all the facts. Should we be con­cerned? My an­swer to that is yes,” Ra­goonath said.

Mean­while, re­tired pub­lic ser­vice head Regi­nald Du­mas said it ap­peared there was not suf­fi­cient con­sul­ta­tion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the pub­lic ser­vice on whether it would be pos­si­ble to pay all back­pay by Christ­mas.

Du­mas, how­ev­er, said politi­cians crit­i­cis­ing pub­lic ser­vants was not new and has been hap­pen­ing since 1975 un­der then Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams. Still, Du­mas said there are some ques­tions he would like Mey­er to an­swer, in­clud­ing the tim­ing of his let­ter to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter, where he stat­ed back­pay for teach­ers could on­ly be paid in May 2024.

“This agree­ment with the teach­ers was done in May (2023), we are now in No­vem­ber, that’s six months. What did the PS do once that agree­ment was reached? Did he say let’s see whether I have the staff to put to­geth­er all the doc­u­ments and all the pa­pers to work out what each teacher is en­ti­tled to? I don’t know, we need to find out from Mr Mey­er,” Du­mas said.

Du­mas al­so found it strange that Mey­er gave a com­mit­ment for May 2024.

“How does he know what mon­ey will be avail­able in May next year? Sup­pose the price of oil drops and mon­ey be­comes even tighter? If you feel like you could not do this by Christ­mas, then what ac­tion did you take? So I will need to know these things be­fore I leap to con­clu­sions,” Du­mas said.

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion MP Ani­ta Haynes called on the Prime Min­is­ter to come clean on whether he gave the in­struc­tions to trans­fer PS Mey­er.

“This de­vel­op­ment, oc­cur­ring in close prox­im­i­ty to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley’s pub­lic lamen­ta­tion about pub­lic ser­vants’ per­ceived au­ton­o­my, am­pli­fies the need for trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in han­dling such cru­cial mat­ters,” she said.

Haynes lament­ed that “rather than be pro­vid­ed with the ad­di­tion­al re­sources and sup­port re­quired, PS Mey­ers was trans­ferred via the in­ter­ven­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter, who al­so paint­ed an in­com­plete and vil­lain­ous pic­ture in the court of pub­lic opin­ion.

“It is quite un­for­tu­nate that a ca­reer pub­lic ser­vant’s rep­u­ta­tion is be­ing di­min­ished be­cause he could not turn wa­ter in­to wine for the Gov­ern­ment.”