Salary Scale, Performance Evaluation bear no relevance these past decades

Dear Editor,

One sees so many brains – on either scale of the divide – storming about salaries, budgeted scales that pretend to represent the value of jobs in the Public Service and the Teaching Profession, respectively. Incidentally, recent discourse and action exclude both the Public Service and Teachers’ Service Commissions.

To note that i) the Public Servants’ Salary Structure was last conceived in 1992; ii) that of the Teachers obtained from the Colonial era. The latter consists of 19 grades (with a total of 24 sub-grades), except that Grade 19 is not a scale. It is elevated as special – specifying a fixed salary for principals. What a stimulating incentive to performance. But then the conscientious leaderships of recent decades do not indulge in performance evaluation, the simple reason being that they expect servants to behave as they are told. The quality and timing of response at any level are irrelevant. Obedience has the same value. It therefore becomes convenient to provide grants.

Consistent therefore is the conceptualisation of the appointment of “contracted employees” whose performance has long been irrelevant of pension benefits, and replaced more immediately by gratuity at the rate of 22.5% of salary every six months.

Salary Scale, Performance Evaluation bear no relevance these past decades. More a matter of families and friends. Reference to NIS needs investigation. But the Opposition remains delinquent, and even refuses to insist on pursuing confirmation of long delayed Acting Appointments as our Judiciary, about which even the Caribbean Court of Justice has complained – in the absence of Union representation.

Who then enquires of non-pensionable acting allowance over the eligible years; and how is leave (sick/vacation) computed. Not to mention NIS.

Within CARICOM our counterparts must wonder why our compensation management literature does not include increments. They wonder too why our Public Servants are not eligible for a higher pensionable age – 60 years; and why we insist on the Colonial age – an embarrassment to the NIS provision.

Yours faithfully,

E.B. John