Sunday, August 30 2009

The Service Commissions will lose their present functions and become an appellate court. Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s main grouses with the current Service Commissions are that they cannot discipline anybody and they promote on seniority. He was preaching from the bible of the new draft constitution, the one nobody knew about, not even the Round Table he had appointed to manage the consultations on constitution reform and produce a new draft.

The Service Commissions were introduced because people were complaining of the arbitrary and unjust decisions that were made by Government, senior Civil Service officers, managers of schools both government and religious. The solution was this independent autonomous body that reported to the Governor who could only suggest changes to their decisions but could not overrule them.

The proposal is for a human resource unit within each ministry to oversee employing, promoting and disciplining public servants and teachers. It is back to the old days and senior officers and that thing called “The Ministry” can adversely and unfairly influence one’s appointment, promotion, and verdict in disciplinary matters.

Political interference is an acknowledged fact in the Service; will this first be changed?

The Prime Minister admits that the Commissions have done a good job in recruitment. Yet there have been numerous allegations from reliable sources of senior officers controlling the despatch of invitations of even attending appointment interviews.

For promotions, too, a ministry’s recommendations may be quite defective. Mr Manning is utterly wrong in blaming the Commissions for promoting on the basis of seniority. For more than 30 years, policy is that, “all other things being equal” seniority may decide. In other words, when candidates cannot be separated after considering all other factors, experience, performance, character traits and whatever, only then will seniority decide.

Yet, by intent and/accident, Ministry’s recommendations may violate this. A promotion vacancy may arise, as from retirement. Notice would have been submitted to the Ministry and, in any case, the Ministry should have been preparing that person’s history of employment and salaries for retirement benefits. If a permanent appointment is not made early, the senior officer is appointed to act. But the rule is clear: an acting promotion, whatever the duration, does not confer the right to seniority in the filling of the post. The Commission rejects such recommendations from the Ministry. Sometimes, even the Ministry’s representative on the Commission’s interviewing panel has to disagree with the Ministry’s recommendations.

But the Prime Minister himself fell into that error in his first veto of the candidate recommended to act in the vacant post of Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) recently. He has no veto in acting appointments.

One of the defects in appointments is that Ministries supply defective staff reports to the Commissions. They may not be completed or completed very late or may clearly not reflect the officer’s performance. Something is wrong when everybody gets the bare passing grade or nobody gets an excellent or very good grade or less than passing grade. The clue comes in remarks like: “How you want me to give a bad mark? I have to work with them; Nobody can get an A under my watch”. Or the senior officer might never have written the junior about his failings and cannot, therefore, justify a poor mark no matter how bad the performance.

And how will the proposed human resource units differ from existing ones?

With more objective personnel? Will they be removed from Ministry influence?

How will the Joint Select Committees (JSCs)of both Houses of Parliament differ from the current JSCs? These are not functioning as the spirit of our Constitution demands as Government appointed a Government majority and a Government member chairperson to them to scrutinise and report on the performance of Government ministries and departments — Government scrutinising itself. The proposed committees of the Houses of Parliament will again be dominated by Government majorities and Government chairpersons; where is the independence?