Employees of the GRA are not Public Servants

Dear Editor,

It would appear that the management of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) has been wrongly encouraged to entertain representation from the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU). The notion that GRA is part of the public service is quite baseless and has no foundation in law.

When the Internal Revenue and the Customs Departments were integrated, after a very comprehensive consultancy exercise led by Revenue Canada, of which the writer was responsible for the Human Resources Management component, care was taken to ensure that the employees involved were assured as a minimum their existing conditions of employment, without any reference to the Union. In fact they were substantially improved upon.

The Guyana Revenue Authority was established under a separate Act, comparable to Guyana Water Inc., for example.

Incidentally, when the Auditor General’s Office was legally transformed to the Audit Office of Guyana, after a similar consultancy exercise, at no time was there any communication with the GPSU about conditions of employment, or indeed its restructure.

Note that both institutions implemented a retirement age of 60 years, as distinct from the Public Service’s 55 years.

The government and the GRA must do their homework, and research as to the legal basis for acceding to the GPSU’s facile argument that employees of the GRA are Public Servants. It would then mean that the Union will have to negotiate with the Government for employment conditions for all public servants including those christened at the GRA. The GRA could not then step out of the public service context – an obvious contradiction in terms.

GRA employees simply cannot benefit from having two cakes. Yours faithfully,

(Name and address provided)