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When President David Arthur Granger announced the date for national regional elections on September 27, 2019, one of Guyana’s best professional female public servants began to make preparations for the possibility of having to search for a new job. She informed her family about the possible changes and surreptitiously and unsuspectingly began to clear her office. She expressed her fear while confiding in a colleague who was surprised. Understandably so, this was a qualified and apolitical public servant of the highest caliber. During the conversation, this consummate professional noted that the other side, if victorious, will never trust someone who has been working so closely with the incumbent political directorate, regardless of their experience, qualifications and professionalism. Her teammate insisted that nobody in their right mind would dare function in government without this level of expertise. Such logic is befitting of normal societies. In Guyana, professional public servants either survive sensibly or court heroic professional deaths.
THE SURVIVAL
Public servants in Guyana exist in their working capacities in two realms; contracted workers or fixed workers. Contracts give the government the option of accessing special services or talents which cannot be found among permanent staff. This is the pure human resource need. However, there is also a sinister motive which government officiants never utter publicly; that visceral need to exert control. In service of this interest, most contracts contain the dreaded termination clause: ‘The government mat at any time determine the engagement of the person engaged on giving him/her one month’s notice in writing or on paying him/her one (1) month’s salary in lieu of notice.’
This clause is used by new governments after an election to put those not deemed as trustworthy, in the breadline. The contract system has been abused and used as a control mechanism by successive governments. He who denies this is either naïve or willfully ignorant.
While contracts provide satisfactory financial inducements, when the time for renewal arrives, it is literally a matter of survival. Hence, the professional public servant with a contract has to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea; either kowtow to the political directorate or court heroic death by standing on principle while rocking the proverbial boat. In this, professionalism is lost and the public is denied top-notch government service. Simply put, a mother with three kids may not have the luxury of demanding Results-Based Management (RBM) from government projects since she is being asked to choose between feeding her kids or being placed on the breadline because politicians are only interested in the 5-year elections cycle. Some may argue: ‘she should switch from contract to the fixed establishment and receive protection from the public service commission in times of uncertainty’. It is not so simplistic, fixed establishment functions with a scale that ranges from GS One (1) to GS Twelve (12) where salaries can range from GY$6000 (US$300) monthly to GY$ 217 000 (US$1000) monthly, woefully short of a comfortable existence. The GS scale is economic death.
HEROIC DEATH
The surest way to end up in the cross airs of politicians or sidelined as a member of the Guyana public service is to stand on principle and doggedly stick to statutory provisions in the face of political direction that runs counter to political aims and objectives. Officeholders see everything through the prism of political expediency and the next vote. As a consequence, actions designed to protect the people’s money or to ensure government projects are efficient that are not consistent with the wishes and demands of the political directorate, are seen as oppositionist. A sad state of affairs exists in the public service environment, accusations of ‘he is a PPP’ and ‘she is a PNC’ are taken from narrow minds of political apparatchiks and catapulted to the Minister’s board room for decisions on promotions and critical bureaucratic interventions. So as far as practicable, the professional tries to walk the straight and narrow path but remains supremely mindful of the implications.
The concept of a professional public service in Guyana will not be realized until this country experiences tectonic transformations that take decades to manifest. In the interim, you can survive sensibly or court heroic death.
