President Granger in one of his first moves made one of the most sweeping restructuring of the Ministries and Departments of the Government. Guyana now has twenty-six Ministers in fifteen Ministries and a host of statutory bodies and agencies. Of course, Mr. Granger was exercising one of the prerogatives of any President as he seeks to establish his own stamp on the Government machinery and signal to the nation the priorities of his Administration. But a prerogative is not to be exercised simply because it is there. There must be strong and compelling reasons for change including matching skills to ministries/departments, obtaining economies of scale, optimising the use of resources and the fair allocation of the workload.
Preventing restructuring from being just a blunt tool requires that it be carefully thought out. Empirical evidence suggests that in the private sector many if not most of the mergers and amalgamations turn out to be costly flops, measured by share price, profitability and other similar or derived measures. Such measures do not apply to ministerial/departmental restructuring under which costs and inefficiencies are simply hidden away. One additional cost is that, based on anecdotal evidence, some government units have been in limbo for at least two months with respect to their reporting relationships and therefore no meaningful work has been performed.
That does not mean that changes must not be made. Instead what it does mean is that success is possible when changes are well planned and properly implemented, where a strong rationale for the changes can be made, and where staff can be positively engaged in making them happen. But even in the absence of properly costed information, the empirical evidence shows that potential benefits are often compromised because such changes are often announced at very short notice, are usually poorly managed and always costly.
In Guyana the structure of the Government has remained remarkably stable since Independence except for 1991 as part of the administrative element of the Economic Recovery Programme. At that time, President Desmond Hoyte with funding from the British Government and the services of international consultants Peat Marwick McLintock reduced the number of ministries from eighteen to eleven. And even with the comprehensive study that preceded the exercise there were complaints that Hoyte had gone too far.
President Granger has not explained to the nation the objectives or reasons for the changes or their costs and benefits. This leaves everyone to speculate. Some have suggested that Mr. Granger knew all along that he would be doing a complete revamp but chose to keep it a secret. Others have speculated that one of the reasons for splitting Ministries was to stick to the letter but not the spirit of the Cummingsburg Accord between the APNU and the AFC, the governing Coalition.
Rather than speculating, let us look at some of the more notable features and results of the reorganisation and ministerial appointments made and gazetted in the Official Gazette of June 6, 2015. Let us start with the Prime Minister. Under the Constitution the person holding this position would be the first Vice-President and Leader of the House. And under the Cummingsburg Accord, the holder has a number of important duties and functions, including recommending ministerial appointments. But instead, the incumbent is responsible for Information only, a gross underuse of the most experienced parliamentarian and politician around.
Compare this with the Minister of State within the Ministry of the Presidency. There are three pages of functions and responsibilities including Cabinet Matters, Defence, National Security, Land Titling, Energy, Natural Resources, Forestry, the Public Service, Citizenship, Climate Change, Births and Deaths, Science and Technology and Scholarships. It is unreasonable to impose such responsibility on any single individual, regardless of how many support staff or junior Ministers are assigned to the holder.
Perhaps the Minister with the briefest but yet unclear portfolio is Ms. Amna Ally, the Minister of Social Cohesion whose responsibilities are Equality and Ethnic Relations, a function which constitutionally falls under the Ethnic Relations Commission. Interestingly Ms. Ally is a Member of Cabinet.
Then there was the missed opportunity to fix the anomaly of the Land Registry falling under the Office of the President. But this is also unlawful since the Registrar and Deputy Registrar of Deeds who fall under the Attorney General, are by law the Registrar and Deputy Registrar of Lands. This has been brought to the attention of the new Administration but no action has been taken. There can be no justification, personality or otherwise, for allowing the continuation of this state of affairs even for one more day.
We have too the new phenomenon of mini-ministries with their creation seemingly more about politics than policy. The Ministry of Trade, Commerce and Industry whose Minister in the last Administration also carried Housing and Water have now been split into separate Ministries of Tourism and Business. Ministers are responsible for policy formulation and direction, not day to day activities.
Similarly, the Ministry of Home Affairs has now been split into two with a mini-Ministry of Citizenship with responsibility for Immigration, Citizenship, Registration of Births and Deaths and Naturalisation and the rest re-designated as Ministry of Public Security. Since the Commissioner of Police is the Chief Immigration Officer it means that that person reports and is answerable to two political heads – the Minister of Public Security and the Minister of Citizenship. Section 6 of the Police Act provides for the Commissioner of Police to be subject to the general orders and directions of “the Minister”.
Some ministries have as many as three ministers while the mega-Ministry of Agriculture has a mere one.
There is also the strange omission of a Ministry of Labour with the Junior Minister in the Ministry of Social Protection seeming to assume many of the responsibilities normally associated with the Ministry of Labour. This is a very sensitive area and requires someone of even temperament with the background and experience in industrial relations who can advise on updates to existing legislation and deal with complex negotiations.
For all its size and average age, the Government is woefully short on experience with a mere handful having managed more than a handful of employees. Indeed only the Ministers of Business and of Tourism have any private sector experience and that was in owner-managed small and medium-sized entities.
Ram & McRae is not convinced that the restructuring was necessary, desirable or beneficial. The concentration of power in the Ministry of the Presidency controlled by two former soldier colleagues needs greater justification. There was no discussion or consultation and this structure is unlikely to be adopted by any succeeding PPP/C Administration. Guyana can ill-afford twenty-six ministers with all the perks that go with the office. For us, it is a restructuring that went too far.
While the Minister of Finance did not refer to the new ministerial structure in his Speech it should not be beyond the scope of the Budget debate. A detailed list of ministries for the years 1980, 1990, 1991, 2007, 2012 and 2015 is included overleaf.
