“No political interference” – Pres Ali to new Public Service Commissioners

The six members of the Public Service Commission (PSC) were on Thursday sworn in by President Dr Irfaan Ali, who reiterated that their role was critical to the development of a reliable, efficient and transparent public sector needed amid Guyana’s ongoing transformation.
The newly-appointed PSC members are: Manniram Prashad, Maurice Gajadhar, Melcita Bovell, Chandrawati Ramson, Mohandatt Goolsarran, and Janice Bowen.
The Commission is a constitutional body responsible for overseeing the Public Service in Guyana, with its composition and functions outlined in Articles 200 to 205, as stated in Article 135(1) of the Constitution.
While congratulating the new members on their three-year appointment, President Ali additionally advised them on their duties and reassured them of the Government’s support.

“The newly-sworn-in members of the Commission are tasked with an important responsibility to ensure that the public service is populated by persons who possess the necessary skills, knowledge and experience to service the people and propel the country’s development,” Ali said.
“The Commission can be assured that there will be no political interference in the discharge of its mandate. The Government remains, as always, committed to creating an environment where the Commission can discharge its function without fear or favour,” he added.
The President further took note of the Commission’s importance as the country undergoes rapid transformation, and the public sector too advances technologically. 

“In the direction our country is going – in a massive transformation – transparency, accountability, efficiency, reliance and credibility of our public sector is very important,” Ali said.
“This Public Service Commission is coming at a time of grand transformation of our country and at a time in which that transformation requires a shift in the cultural makeup of the public service. The cultural shift is the way we approach our work [and our] thinking, because there must be structural and monumental changes for us to achieve the type of output that we want to achieve,” Ali said.
The President added that the Government was in turn moving aggressively to implement a menu of measures to ensure the public service had better standards of living and increased access to opportunities.
“The PSC is thus tasked with making appointments, effecting dismissals and exercising disciplinary control over public servants,” Ali said.
In ensuring high quality and efficiency of the public service, the President disclosed the Cabinet’s plans to establish basic standards across all public services as well as a central mechanism of monitoring these services.
“We are now going to set up a central mechanism of monitoring where in every centre or every facility that delivers public service, there will be some numbers there that persons can call in the national call centre and report on the way they were treated [and] how they felt about the service,” Ali said.
“That will go against the providers of the service in performance evaluation. That is a system that we’re discussing now at the Cabinet, so that at every level, people will be held accountable,” Ali said.
The long-awaited swearing-in of this new PSC now paves the way for the full complement of members of the Judicial Service Commission (JDC) and the Police Service Commission.
As mandated, the PSC consists of six members; three of whom are appointed by the President after consultation with the Leader of the Opposition, two of whom are nominated by the National Assembly, and the remaining member being nominated by the President, at his discretion.
As the Chairman of the PSC typically serves as a member of the JDC and the Police Service Commission, the absence of a functional PSC since August 2021 has had implications on these other constitutional bodies.