Much more consultative approach needed for training institution worthy of Dr Bertram Collins

Dear Editor,

Nowrang Persaud’s letter of April 21, 2017 in SN has aroused further reflections on the portrayed incapacity of the so called ‘Staff’ college; ‘Staff’ only because some of the 17-20 years old invited to be applicants may already be in the Public Service in the category of ‘Clerical and Office Support’. Incidentally, apart from Contracted Employees – a very high profile category in all the Ministries of this current governance structure. The other employee categories are listed in the following hierarchical order:

`- Administrative - Senior Technical - Other Technical and Craft Skilled??

Under ‘Clerical and Office Support’ are:

- Semi-skilled operatives and unskilled.

- Temporary employees (without reference to any attributes).

Given the minimum academic level of eligibility to a one year training programme as advertised:1) six months of classroom; 2) six months of attachments, it would be imperative for a mechanism to be instituted for measuring the impact individual graduates would make, distributed, as they must be, across several agencies. So the expected cumulative positive impact on any entity’s effectiveness could be no more than a chimera.

By the way, would these graduates qualify for an upgrade to the category of Other Technical Craft Skilled? Somehow, one gets the impression that the Senior Executive Director may not have read pages 32-42 of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Public Service of Guyana, which dealt with “Training and Development in the Public Service”. For convenience its reference to the Public Service Staff College is quoted below:

“161. While it is not part of our terms of reference, we have noted with interest the proposal for the establishment of a Staff College to provide training for public servants.

We are not at present, in a position to conclusively advise or comment on this initiative. However, we have provided a number of principles of training that could be helpful in its development. We are aware that there are a number of agencies that provide training such as the University of Guyana and other external agencies. In our view, it would be prudent that collaborative arrangements be put in place to ensure that institutions are not operating at cross purposes.

20. We accordingly recommend that all public training agencies should have a consultative arrangement to ensure that all Public Service training objectives are successful achieved.”

A cynic could not help suspecting that the COI’s observation was made with an appropriate amount of restraint – in other words, with ‘tongue-in-cheek’.

Apart from the above, there should be no argument that change in organisations of any kind begins from the top. Hence, changes in Government, for example. So why not follow the logic of continuing change of habits, attitudes, values, and visions; improving effectiveness, by focusing on senior levels as a priority. It is they who would become role models for the ‘College’ graduates who would be attached to their unit or section of the assigned agency.

The bottom-up approach intended by the College in any case substantively flies in the face of the proliferation of Contracted Employees across Ministries since 2015, who, for some reason, are not susceptible to training (which brings to mind a twist to the concept of ‘duty free’ conditions. Hereunder is just a miniscule

sample of Contracted Employees’ population growth between 2015 and 2016:

2015 35

60 601

2016 56

116 691

Of a total establishment of 88 in 2015, 72 were Contracted Employees, compared to 79 of the latter of a total of 93 in 2016 – in the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs.

The same pattern obtained in the Ministry of Public Infrastructure: 248 Contracted Employees of a total of 344 in 2015; and 274 of 350 in 2016 – which could imply that some pensionables were either transitioned to, or replaced by, Contracted Employees. Hopefully the point would have been made of how substantively misdirected is the Staff College’s indicative training and development project. But presumably it has not been decided whether ‘Contracted Employees’ are legitimate ‘staff’ or should remain ‘novices’.

As Nowrang Persaud has suggested, and the COI Report has hinted, there needs to be a much more consultative approach to the creation of a training and developmental institution truly worthy of Dr. Bertram Collins.

Yours faithfully, E. B. John