Latest update March 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 21, 2014 Editorial
Nowadays, the role of permanent secretaries is akin to that of a toothless poodle when their functions and performance are examined. These officials, who are the chief executives, are the accounting officers with responsibility for the effective day-to-day management of their ministries and the public servants in government’s employ.
Being required to serve with the domineering presence of their political bosses a constant reminder of their impotence, it is no wonder that the office of Permanent Secretary is perceived as an extension of political patronage, dominance and facilitator of the corrupt practices for which ministerial dealings are increasingly being highlighted.
As the most senior public servant at a government ministry whose job it is to ensure that budgetary allocation and other funds are appropriately spent, the current behaviour of their principals suggests one of two things. It is either that Permanent Secretaries are appointed with no regard to their suitability.
We can understand this in the local context since the actual Guyanese experience is one where political party activists with little or no knowledge of public service rules and with absolutely no previous acquaintance with the bureaucracy, overnight become Permanent Secretaries or deputy permanent secretaries (DPS).
To expect that a Permanent Secretary faced with a situation of dubious legal merit would have recourse to a higher office for an intervention (or interpretation) would be like fighting a hopeless cause.
Apart from the minister, the Permanent Secretary reports to the head of the public service who in our extant circumstance is the person who also wears the hats of Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Cabinet Secretary, and Secretary of the Defence Board. This is surely a remarkable achievement which requires the energy and attention of an indefatigable person with the focus to address competing demands.
It would be a reasonable assumption that our permanent secretaries –political activists or otherwise— are not subject to the level of scrutiny to which their more professional counterparts in other jurisdictions are exposed.
Looking at the Guyana situation it is understood that to be a minister of government one does not have to possess any specific qualifications for cabinet duty. However, the same should not be the expectation when it comes to the selection or promotion of persons to the position of principal public servant of a ministry.
After all, the people have enough of nepotism, favouritism and all the rest of it to have to put up with more mediocrity at that hitherto professional level. What is anticipated is that cabinet ministers would have made optimum use of the advice and assistance of a professional cadre of apolitical permanent secretaries if they were to discharge their constitutional duties and responsibilities on behalf of, and for the benefit of the Guyanese people.
What this country is crying out for is a break from pettiness as evidenced in the way that certain ministers ride roughshod over their Permanent Secretaries and undermine their statutory function of accounting officer. What else could be the reason for this deafening silence in an environment of improper use of public funds, if not because public officers feel cowed and fearful of losing their benefits?
Of course the possibility also exists that some among them might be drawing down kickbacks from questionable deals involving the public purse.
The important point to be made here is that a professional Permanent Secretary is expected to provide stability regardless of who occupies the seat of government. But we are not afforded that level of comfort since even those who might have started out as knowledgeable, decisive public servants worthy of their ascension to that high office, have allowed their professional principles to be compromised on the altar of political expediency.
Except for a brief flash at public sector reform some years ago, the public service has remained largely moribund in character bespeaking a lack of effectiveness on the industrial relations front.
Continuous complaints about the service quality certainly do not help the cause of the public servant. The public service remains a lowly paid mass of workers with low levels of confidence and morale which are inextricably linked to poor leadership by permanent secretaries.
Listen to the man that is throwing Guyanese bright future away
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