Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

On hear­ing a min­istry em­ploy­ee had been hauled off to St Ann's, my first thought was sur­prise that it had tak­en that long for some­one to wig out at a gov­ern­ment of­fice. Every­one vague­ly knows some­thing is very wrong with the civ­il ser­vice, but you don't get the full hor­ror un­til you've worked there.

Some years ago, I sent out a pile of ap­pli­ca­tions, one of which was to a min­istry, and sur­prise, they re­spond­ed with­in days. Ap­par­ent­ly they were des­per­ate, in more ways than one. I went through the ab­surd tests, and was in­ter­viewed by a for­eign per­son, who had ac­quired the po­si­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tions di­rec­tor de­spite know­ing noth­ing about Trinida­di­an me­dia, lan­guage, or cul­ture. (Pre­sum­ably this lack of lo­cal knowl­edge led to my be­ing hired.)

Some things start off OK, then get bad. This start­ed bad, and got worse as the en­vi­ron­ment be­gan to clar­i­fy. I re­alised ear­ly that two things mat­tered in the min­istry: one, know­ing the reg­u­la­tions rel­e­vant to keep­ing your job; and two, nev­er let­ting an in­sult go un-avenged. The rules were de­signed to pro­tect civ­il ser­vants from po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, but civ­il ser­vants use them for "Anan­si" pur- pos­es like "re­sis­tance." And see­ing what they worked in, I didn't blame them.

My ti­tle was "re­searcher," and (I was told) I was on con­tract, not a civ­il ser­vant, er­go more wuk, few­er rights. My con­tract could take months to be pre­pared and till then, I was sub­ject to the dis­cre­tion of the for­eign per­son, who sub­se­quent­ly told me (in writ­ing) I didn't seem grate­ful for the wuk.

My re­search du­ties en­tailed col­lect­ing in­for­ma­tion from var­i­ous de­part­ments, so I saw the whole set-up. Fa­cil­i­ties were de­crepit, per­son­nel were treat­ed like brutes, and were al­ways vex and showed it-by, for ex­am­ple, the rate at which doc­u­ments moved through the sys­tem. In 2012 I re­ceived the min­is­ter's of­fi­cial ap­proval for the job, which I'd va­cat­ed years be­fore.

Much of the dys­func­tion is due to the en­vi­ron­ment's ef­fects on clerks' feel­ings, which are im­por­tant in ways you wouldn't be­lieve. I once re­marked ca­su­al­ly to some­one that the fil­ing sys­tem was ar­cha­ic. It was a mis­take; "ar­cha­ic" sound­ed un­friend­ly. The clerk said: "Eh heh?" And re­turned to an ab­sorb­ing dis­cus­sion of Danc­ing With the Stars with an­oth­er clerk. The fol­low­ing day some­one else was at the desk, who told me: "De of­fi­cer on leave," and my doc­u­ments were gone.

High-lev­el meet­ings start­ed with a se­nior of­fi­cial telling tech­nocrats he was smarter than them, then read­ing the in­tro­duc­to­ry para­graphs to tech­ni­cal re­ports, pro­nounc­ing them rub­bish and or­der­ing them re­done. At that point, the not-so-smart ex­perts pursed their lips and stayed qui­et as poli­cies and leg­is­la­tion were for­mu­lat­ed with­out their ex­per­tise.

I was asked to write speech­es for the se­nior of­fi­cial, who de­cid­ed I, too, had to be shown I was not smart, wit all dat ed-u-k-shun. A talk-ra­dio host was called in to help me write a speech, at which point I re­alised I'd been punked, and start­ed treat­ing the whole thing like a re­al­i­ty show. When the of­fi­cial re­alised I was amused (be­neath my blank of­fice-face), I was told I had been hired de­spite "peo­ple" say­ing I was a PNM hater, and I bet­ter straight­en up. He wasn't tol­er­at­ing no non­sense, like amuse­ment.

Well, rule two kicked in. I wrote to the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary say­ing the of­fi­cial mis­un­der­stood his lim­its, and re­quest­ed a meet­ing, to re­spond ap­pro­pri­ate­ly in front of wit­ness­es, and rec­om­mend­ed all at­ten­dees wear pro­tec­tive gear-for the spat­ter.

I met with the head of HR, the for­eign per­son, and the PS. The se­nior of­fi­cial nev­er showed up. The por­tents were clear, even with­out a prophet­ess. So I said, "Look, lewwe do this the easy way. Just give me a cou­ple of months' sev­er­ance, and cut me loose, nuh." But the easy way is not the gov­ern­ment way. Tech­ni­cal­ly (they said) I had done noth­ing wrong, so they couldn't sev­er me. (They could, how­ev­er, lie and cre­ate a pa­per trail to dis­cred­it and de­stroy fu­ture prospects. Which they did.)

Since I had their at­ten­tion, I raised a few oth­er is­sues I'd en­coun­tered. Like the promised "flex­i­bil­i­ty" for work­ing late, and week­ends, which had not ma­te­ri­alised. The HR head asked me: "What you mean by 'flex­i­bil­i­ty'?" I said com­pen­sato­ry time off, work from home arrange­ments, ad­just­ed hours and so on. The HR eyes looked at me in shock and said: "'Flex­i­bil­i­ty' mean you come to wuk, then go home and wuk, then come back to wuk for 8 am."

The chuck­le well ran dry at that point. I said: "I is clear­ly not de man for this wuk." She looked at me as if I'd grown a third head, and I went back to wuk. A week lat­er, I got a let­ter from the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary ac­knowl­edg­ing my com­plaint, say­ing the meet­ing had been pro­duc­tive, and the min­istry ap­pre­ci­at­ed my con­tri­bu­tion. I got a let­ter from the for­eign per­son on the same day say- ing I was a dis­grace, and bet­ter get the hell out.

A week lat­er, a signed per­for­mance ap­praisal ap­peared on my desk. (For those un­schooled in HR pro­to­col, a pre-signed ap­praisal is like a sum­mons to a tri­al, with a copy of the ver­dict at­tached.) You can guess what it said. By the month's end, it was over.

I con­sid­ered su­ing them, and saw a lawyer. As I start­ed to de­scribe the sit­u­a­tion, he said: "Wait." He went in­to an­oth­er room, had a heat­ed phone con­ver­sa­tion, and came back. "I cyar take the case," he said. "I is the man they con­sult be­fore they fire you." I had to ad­mit, it was fun­ny. But for the peo­ple for whom the job was all they had, the choice be­tween its loss, and en­dur­ing con­stant abuse, might be mad­den­ing.