Guyana’s public service will shortly come under in-depth scrutiny by a commission of inquiry that will examine the quality of recruitment and pay to that category of government employees.
The hearings, set to commence later this week or early next week, will be open to the general public for oral presentations, and will be held at the Public Service Department, Waterloo Street.
The three-member team, under the chairmanship of Professor Harold Lutchman, will be examining means of bettering the public sector, including reviewing the current age of retirement and making recommendations.
While 30 statements have been received, the commission has issued a call for other submissions urging the populace to get involved.
“We have not come here with pre-determined decisions…we are going to listen to the stakeholders for an efficient public sector,” Lutchman stated yesterday at a press briefing.
The other two commissioners are Sandra Jones and Samuel Goolsarran.
Secretary to the Com-mission Geeta Chandan-Edmond said that the members of the public have been calling and emailing the secretariat with statements about their experiences in the public service. She said statements have also been received from persons in the diaspora. Chandan-Edmond also guaranteed that the process of persons making submissions will be impartial.
The commission of inquiry was established by President David Granger.
The commission’s mandate, established by its terms of reference states that it will, “Inquire into, report on, and make recommendations on the role, functions, recruitment, training, remuneration, conditions of service and other matters pertaining to personnel employed in the Guyana Public Service.”
It will also determine what measures should be taken to improve the efficiency of the public service in the discharge of their duties to the general public and review the methodology used in classification and recruitment of those workers.
Further, the COI will examine the principles on which salaries and wages of public servants should be fixed specifically; the mechanism for the determination of wages and salaries, the level of consistency between the salaries and the various levels of public servants and the basis on which enumeration for various levels of public servants is determined.
The three-member commission informed that they were not privy to the cost of the COI or how much they will be earning as commissioners and that at this time that was not their focus. They said that a review of the public sector in Guyana was long overdue since it’s only through periodic analysis that governments are able to ascertain what works and what needs upgrade and changes.
“We are not concerned about cost at this stage, you cannot look at cost,” Lutchman stressed as he explained that the main objective was the bettering of the public sector.
He said that the commission’s main concern was also to see “to what extent the recommendations made will reach down to the public servants and others.”
Additional submissions can be forwarded via email to publicservantscommission@gmail.com or sent to the secretariat at the Public Service Department on Waterloo Street. Any additional inquiries can be made via telephone at 225-4321.
Nonetheless the commission will be visiting the three counties to interface with public servants and persons who use the services of the public service.
Lutchman pointed out that while government has given a tentative duration period of three months, it was too early to determine if the renewal option given will be used.
