Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has con­firmed that the ex­is­tence of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion is be­ing re­viewed. He ad­mit­ted that the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion "had not worked well" in T&T. "That is a mat­ter that we have to com­plete­ly re­view. We have to com­plete­ly re­think this ques­tion of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion be­cause it is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly more dif­fi­cult to sit on boards be­cause of that arrange­ment," he said. Man­ning said what was worse was that "we are now dis­cov­er­ing it has be­come very dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to sit on the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion it­self."

Man­ning was speak­ing dur­ing a PNM pub­lic meet­ing at Wendy Fitzwilliam Boule­vard, Diego Mar­tin, Mon­day night. Mem­bers of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, ap­point­ed on May 1, re­signed with­in a week of their ap­point­ment. The first to re­sign with­in hours of his ap­point­ment was Jus­tice Zain­ool Khan, who claimed Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards had re­neged on a promise to make him deputy chair­man of the body which re­ceived the de­c­la­ra­tions of as­sets of pub­lic of­fi­cials in the coun­try. "That arrange­ment has not worked well and we would like to hear the views of the pop­u­la­tion on how that should now be han­dled," Man­ning stressed.

On an­oth­er mat­ter, Man­ning said Gov­ern­ment was propos­ing that the Con­sti­tu­tion be amend­ed to al­low per­ma­nent sec­re­taries to hire, dis­ci­pline and pro­mote pub­lic ser­vants in­stead of the ser­vice com­mis­sions. Man­ning said this was one of the mea­sures pro­posed in the Draft Work­ing Doc­u­ment on the Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form. He said the ex­ist­ing ser­vice com­mis­sions were un­able to dis­ci­pline pub­lic ser­vants."To get around that we are go­ing to del­e­gate these func­tions from the ser­vice com­mis­sions to the per­ma­nent sec­re­taries in the var­i­ous min­istries," Man­ning said.

He said, "There is go­ing to be a Hu­man Re­source Unit in each min­istry, which will em­ploy peo­ple, which would dis­ci­pline peo­ple, which will pro­mote peo­ple in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished prin­ci­ples and the ser­vice com­mis­sions will now be­come an ap­pel­late body." Man­ning said with re­spect to the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, Gov­ern­ment pro­posed that a new agency be set up to re­cruit, train, pro­mote, dis­ci­pline and fire teach­ers. Sim­i­lar­ly, he said any ag­griev­ed teacher can ap­peal to the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion for re­dress.