The Mayor and City Council is considering cutting back on staff as it grapples with its finance and garbage collection crisis but heads of departments yesterday painted a grim picture of being understaffed and were unable to identify possible cuts.
Yesterday at City Hall, Mayor Hamilton Green met with heads of departments to discuss a possible reduction in staff. According to Green, “The way I understand it the government is not willing to assist (with further financing) unless the wages bill is reduced.”
“I wanted to ask the staff in the extant circumstances how can we satisfy the beliefs, thesis of the government to reduce staff and more specifically the wage bill,” Green said.
The question of a possible reduction in staff came after a meeting with the private sector where an agreement to continue assistance to the council was discussed but the issue of overstaffing at City Hall was raised along with a possible reduction.
The media was invited to the meeting as observers as the Town Clerk, the Clerk of Markets, City Constabulary, Engineer’s Department made presentations on the human resources capacity of their departments.
The Town Clerk acting, Yonette Pluck-Cort was the first to make her presentation. Pluck-Cort said that “the council financial position has not improved any this year”. She however pointed out that there was a small improvement in payment of salaries for the month of July.
As she commended the workers for fair management of the current situation she gloomily pointed out, “For us to offer a higher level of service we need to have more staff.”
The meeting was intended to be a discussion between City Council workers and union leaders but only Andrew Garnett, president of the Guyana Local Govern-ment Officers Union was present. Representatives of the Guyana Labour Union were not present. According to Green, they had a prior conference or retreat at the same time.
Following Pluck-Cort’s presentation, Garnett said that as the council critically analyses staffing “we must not forget that service delivery is maintained and the city is not disappointed”.
Meanwhile, the Chief of the City Constabulary, Andrew Foo, related that in terms of manpower his department had to service a 15 square mile area with a hundred constables short. His department required 287 persons but currently has only 178 persons.
High turnover and lack of timely payment and an attractive salary are among the reasons Foo listed as constraints to achieving full manpower. Added to this is an insufficient supply of equipment and other things, he said.
And the Clerk of Market echoed similar problems with manpower. Schulder Griffith said that his department required 85 staff members inclusive of administrative clerks and sanitation workers but its actual number is 65.
Thirty-one of that number are sanitation workers who are responsible for the cleaning of all five municipal markets, Griffith said. “Right away we can see that amount is inadequate. Simply put we are short of staff,” Griffith told those present.
In reply, Assistant City Engineer Colvern Venture said, “If we are to reduce the staff we have right now then our department would also have to look at either cutting one or two of the services offered.”
The engineer’s department’s current human capacity is 98 but their budgeted number for 2010 is 140. This is only in terms of drainage works. Manning the workshop are 18 persons but it requires 36. In the building section, there are 19 building inspectors among the 22 workers. According to Venture, this section underperforms because of their limited manpower, “It is difficult to effectively monitor construction in the city.”
Absent from the meeting was the head of the public health department but the Town Clerk speaking on her behalf said that the lack of human resources was similar in other departments. While present, the city treasurer did not make any presentation.
The Public Health Department lacks nurses and those that are there have to “double up” to work at the other health centres too. According to Pluck-Cort, “The number of nurses to service these centres is fewer than we should have.”
Burrowes Report
In a 2009 Report on the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the operation of the Mayor and City Council of Georgetown led by Keith Burrowes “it was determined that there is overall need for increased capacity at City Hall, more urgently in some specific areas than in others”.
The second volume of the CoI, Benchmarks used during the Commission’s work, revealed that there was inadequate staffing in drainage, road maintenance, meat and food hygiene, maternal and child welfare, city constabulary, rodent and vector control and environment and sanitation.
In the Findings and Recommendations volume of the CoI it was found that, among other things, a review of skills and competencies was needed along with staff training and development. The report had found that there was no training plan. “…In the case of a number of senior officers, there were promotions solely based on some form of qualification enhancement, in most cases unrelated to their work,” the report found.
In his executive report, Burrowes stated that “general performance levels have been shown to be sub-optimal largely because no conscious targets were set…” and as a result “little accountability was required”.
His summary also revealed that there were “substantial performance gaps” in key areas such as the Treasurer’s and Engineer’s Departments. He also pointed out that while the market had an “effective revenue collection record” its physical security environment was “in a parlous state of disrepair”.
The Public Health Depart-ment meanwhile was commended for “conscientiously implementing a regular programme, the cost of its activities was disproportionately subsidised”.
These, the summary added, “Indicated that there was no coherent human resources development programme to facilitate personal/professional development, and therefore contributed to organisational incompetence”.
