Dear Editor,
Having regard to the tone of my many letters kindly published by Stabroek News and mostly of a critical nature, I consider it appropriate that I clear the air by asserting, as I now do, that I am unfettered by any political party affiliation or association. My sole standpoint is that of an ordinary citizen asserting his right to comment for the public benefit on matters of serious public interest. I speak specifically as one with ample information and experience regarding the disastrous conditions attending the Deeds Registry and the Land Registry as governmental departments charged with the disciplined operation of the two principal systems of a reliable land-titles administration.
I write as a citizen fully convinced that any nation which is prepared to permit and abide the clear deterioration in quality of service now obtaining at those two registries is a nation well on course toward a state anarchy.
Following the national elections of November 28, 2011, Mr Mohabir Anil Nandlall was appointed Attorney General. I am not qualified to comment on his performance of his constitutional position and duties as Legal Advisor to the Government. So be it. But he was also appointed Minister of Legal Affairs, as is traditional, with responsibility for the conduct of the Deeds Registry. Although I have not seen the Presidential Order bringing the Land Registry under his ministerial purview, I accept his word and treat it as true.
It is these two ministerial responsibilities that attract my deep concern, hence my address and reference to Mr Nandlall are limited to his functions as such Minister. I concentrate now on the affairs of the Deeds Registry.
We have had much discussion both oral and written ending with my letter to the Minister of January 12, 2012 acknowledged by him on January 13, 2012. The essence of our disagreement was captured in my letter to you of Stabroek News March 29, 2012, my position being as it remains, that the matter for compelling and immediate address is the repair of the operations of the Deeds Registry. The Minister’s stand was his obedience to the diktat of “Cabinet” that the conversion of the Deeds Registry into a “semi-autonomous” agency as envisioned under the Deeds Registry Authority Act 1999 (‘DRAA’) was his first priority.
It should be remembered that the DRAA was an imposition by international financing institutions that it be in our statutes awaiting Ministerial Order to be brought into force. That was 1998! Now, if Cabinet’s re-awakening in the year 2012 is the result of any insistence by those financiers, it should not be beyond the capacity and skill of the present Minister to persuade them that the condition of the Deeds Registry thirteen years ago was not reflective of the state of crisis that today faces that department.
The point must be made to them that our energies should be more profitably directed toward repairing the hull of the ship rather than to some organizational title and prescription that does not address the crucial matter of the Registry remaining afloat.
It must be remembered that the premature efforts of the previous Minister between October, 2010 and his political demise of November 30, 2011 to bring the DRAA into operation foundered upon his disobedience to section 7 of that statute relating to the emoluments and pensionable status of the existing employees of the Deeds Registry who might be invited to continue their governmental employment status. That Minister had caused letters from his ministry to be issued to employees inviting them to indicate their desire to be employed by the Registry as an entity incorporated under the Act without having carried out the provisions of the said section 7. The issue came to an end with that Minister’s political demise.
It is quite evident that no trouble has been taken by the Minister or any of the ministry’s officers to apprise Cabinet of the true position. Is this not strong argument for at least a small delegation from Cabinet to go and spend an hour or two of insightful on-the-spot inspection of the Deeds Registry operations?
Regrettably, the plot really thickens.
Since Mr Nandlall has the ominous habit of announcing his ministry’s programme in the first person singular, one is never sure that his plans reflect the deliberate will of the government. However, his ministry embarked on a very sensitive programme in early June, 2012 which entailed the addressing of individual letters to each employee of the Deeds Registry, namely, those engaged through the constitutional medium of the Public Service Commission, inviting them to elect to abandon such employment and to seek employment with “a new semi autonomous Deeds Registry” in keeping with “the continuing Public Service Reform,” or opt to be transferred to another Government Ministry.
Those letters were each followed by one dated June 14, 2012 with some more details related to termination of present employment, accompanied by a Deeds Registry Draft Contract of Employment. For the limited purpose of the essential points to be made at this stage, I elicit from the text of those letters that the proposed employment would feature the following:
(a) The employee’s Civil Service status will terminate.
(b) The Deeds Registry employment will be on contract, one year at a time with annual gratuity.
(c) There will be no pension plan.
It must be noted at this point that for the purpose of this transitional exercise, the ministry has been granted the services of a consultant, a lady lawyer whose services are afforded by the “Competitiveness” Programme funded, I am told, by the IDB. They may do well to pay strict attention to the quality of these proceedings.
I must now invite your kind attention and that of your readers, to the most disturbing aspects of the Minister’s approach to this undertaking.
Firstly, under the previous Minister Ramson letters to staff members inviting the exercise of options despite the wrong-sided approach, were forthright in that they identified the Deeds Registry, the prospective new employer as being incorporated by the Deeds Registry Authority Act 1999 (“the DRAA”).
That would at least confer upon it legal status as an employer. However, the letters of invitation so recently issued to employees under the Nandlall dispensation significantly make no reference whatever to the DRAA or to any legislation that would give the Deeds Registry that quality.
It is therefore incumbent upon Minister Nandlall to state unequivocally and without delay what is the statutory authority upon which he relies to vest his “semi-autonomous Deeds Registry” with appropriate legal status to hold itself out not only as a legal entity but also as a potential employer of persons.
Without such clarification, the Minister exposes himself to an accusation of deception inflicted upon a staff of lay persons who are called upon to make a serious commitment regarding their future employment without proper assurance of the nature and quality of the prospective new employer. From an ethical, moral, and legal standpoint the matter cannot proceed in the absence of such ministerial clarification.
The second fundamental issue is the failure of the ministry in its communication with the recognized trade union namely, the Guyana Public Service Union. The Minister, officers of his ministry and in this case the consultant engaged ought to know that it is a fundamental tenet of modern and informed industrial relations practice that any plans by the employer affecting the status of the organization and the terms and conditions of employment of the members of a bargaining unit must from the inception be communicated in writing in the clearest terms to the union concerned. This was clearly not done in the present case. The union’s recent involvement at the instance of a few of the employees is totally unacceptable. The situation must be remedied by the Minister without delay.
In the above regard, I make the respectful suggestion that Minister Nandlall seek the wise counsel of his ministerial colleague Dr Nanda K Gopaul, the incumbent Minister of Labour, one well experienced in the modalities and proper handling of matters of this nature.
I shall seek your customary editorial indulgence in dealing further with the issue upon seeing the reply by the Minister of Legal Affairs to the serious question raised above.
Yours faithfully,
Leon O Rockcliffe
