Public servants waited with bated breath for more than three hours on Monday to hear if Government would announce a month tax-free bonus but were instead treated to a tongue lashing by Finance Minister Winston Jordan, who in addition to announcing marginal adjustments to the taxes paid by workers, lashed out at the public service, calling it lethargic and inept.
Finance Minister Winston Jordan
He later told reporters that Government simply did not have the monies available to make the one month tax-free payment to members of the public service.
Speaking to public administration and public financial management during his presentation of the 2017 National Estimates (Budget) on Monday, Finance Minister Jordan said “this Administration has inherited a national crisis of institutional lethargy and ineptitude (in the public service).”
Expanding on his position, the Minister told the House that all across the Public Sector, we are faced with issues of sluggishness in implementation, poor inter-agency coordination and cooperation, and a deficit of strategic planning and management.
According to Jordan, the coalition A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Government is “perturbed by this situation, as it is a daunting indication of the effort that needs to be invested in ensuring that public services of the highest quality are delivered to the Guyanese people.”
Describing the situation as a “malaise”, Minster Jordan said the task at hand will be tackled frontally.
The Minister in providing some insight on Government’s proposal to reform the public service through its public servants, pointed to comprehensive institutionalisation of the tenets of results-based management.
He pointed too to the recently opened public service college and its role in revitalising workers.
According to the Finance Minister, it is “to ensure that our public servants, at all levels of Government, are better equipped to develop and execute our vision and plans, the recently-opened Bertram Collins College of the Public Service will provide for a wide range of training in public administration and related fields.”
Despite voting against the Opposition People’s Progressive Party/Civic’s demands to have the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the public service addressed at the level of a Parliamentary Select Committee, Jordan said, its findings will be utilised to arrest the attrition of qualified public servants.
No bonus
Meanwhile, on the matter of the expected increases, the Minister instead said Government will continue to engage the Unions in negotiations to find common ground to issues pertaining to wage and salary adjustment, de-bunching and allowances, taking into consideration the state of the economy and our desire to maintain macroeconomic stability.
He subsequently told reporters that the payment of the one month tax-free bonus for all public servants was unlikely since the money was not available.
Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo this past week had called for Government to make the one month tax-free bonus payment to all public servants and pointed to the $8 billion that was transferred from the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) to the Consolidated Fund that could be used to finance the payments.
According to Jordan, however, “We’d love to, once we could find money to do bonus.”
He said, “I think what happened this year is that we paid a slightly bigger salary than last year overall and also I think we took on some more numbers… I think the security service, in a sense, took away what we could have had.”
Minister Jordan told reporters “we are still looking but at this stage, it is a very slim possibility… Up to last night (Sunday), when we were doing numbers, I was hoping to find something; but, like I said, we took on a few people in the security sector and their bill has to be added up.”
Jordan earlier in the evening drew reference to the one to 10 per cent salary increase that had been paid to workers last month.
