Civil servants warn against staff appointment delays under NIDS

AS THE transitional process from the Registrar General’s Department (RGD) to the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) is set to get under way following the passage of the NIDS law, a trade union leader is cautioning against inordinate delays in appointing staff.

President of the Jamaica Civil Service Association, O’Neil Grant, told a joint select committee reviewing the NIDS bill on Wednesday that he was concerned about the transitional arrangements, particularly relating to the secondment of RGD staff to NIRA.

“Our experience has been under these transition arrangements where the l aw is general, it leads to interpretation, and the interpretation oftentimes causes hardship to the members,”he said.

Grant indicated that the provision in Section 36 of the NIDS bill dealing with transition arrangements was similar to that of the Tax Administration Jamaica Act (TAJ) of 2013, which created problems for the workers.

He said that TAJ workers had been on secondment for two years in a situation where the legislation had said that the period should not extend beyond six months.

“We had to take industrial action for the TAJ to actually appoint the persons, so we do have that concern, and we are hoping that the legislation will give a stronger impetus to the agency to treat with the appointment of persons,”Grant asserted.

The JCSA president welcomed a particular aspect of the legislation that did not prescribe a term limit for the chief executive officer.

SAFEGUARDING TENURE

He said this would safeguard the tenure of career public servants who did not wish to be re-engaged in a contractual arrangement.

“We do believe that there are some offices that must have a certain amount of tenure so that when public servants, like myself, who rise through the ranks in public offices, that we are not placed in a contract relationship, and our long years of service can be terminated on a whim, which we have seen happen in a lot of cases,” the trade unionist said.

He added: “Jamaica has one of the worst records in the use of fixedterm contracts to disenfranchise workers, and it does cost the Government of Jamaica millions of dollars when we have to now pay out the unexpired terms of these contracts and also to settle suits brought for wrongful termination.

Grant said he hoped that the provisions treating with the CEO were applied in line with the law and not subjected to a fixed-term contract.

Turning to the proposed composition of the board of the NIRA, Grant expressed concern that a worker representative or trade unionist was not listed.