Mick­ela Pan­day

The struc­ture of gov­ern­ment in T&T has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly since In­de­pen­dence. It is less cen­tralised that it used to be and sev­er­al func­tions once per­formed by Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment have been giv­en to state agen­cies and state en­ter­pris­es which are staffed by con­tract em­ploy­ees and not by staff of min­istries of gov­ern­ment.

For ex­am­ple, the postal ser­vice, once part of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, was scrapped and TTPost cre­at­ed. Many of the func­tions Min­istry of Works once per­formed are now done by pub­lic bod­ies like Nid­co, Ude­cott and the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of T&T. It is the RHAs, not the Min­istry of Health, that are pri­mar­i­ly re­spon­si­ble for pub­lic health care and the EF­CL, not the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, builds our schools.

Whilst func­tions for the de­liv­ery of es­sen­tial util­i­ties eg, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty and tele­phone con­tin­ue to be per­formed by state bod­ies, name­ly WASA, T&TEC, and Tel­co (since ab­sorbed in­to TSTT, which is ma­jor­i­ty owned by the State), mod­ern func­tions are now per­formed by new spe­cial­ist pub­lic bod­ies eg, the EMA, SWM­COL and E-TecK.

Add to that those pub­lic bod­ies like the Cen­tral Bank, the ADB, the Port Au­thor­i­ty, the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, Petrotrin and NGC, as well as those which are ar­guably no busi­ness of the State eg, CN­MG and CAL, and it be­comes ap­par­ent that these pub­lic bod­ies con­trol bil­lions of dol­lars of our mon­ey. There are over 200 of these pub­lic bod­ies, in­clud­ing 45 state en­ter­pris­es. They are com­pa­nies cre­at­ed by statute or in­cor­po­rat­ed by Par­lia­ment or un­der the Com­pa­nies Act. In re­spect of pow­er, pres­tige and ex­pen­di­ture, cer­tain of them are ar­guably big­ger than any min­istry and their boards big­ger than any min­is­ter.

No­tably, it is the gov­ern­ment in pow­er that ap­points the boards of di­rec­tors of these pub­lic bod­ies, and here­in is where the first prob­lem lies. There is no buffer or as­sur­ance of au­ton­o­my as is the case in the pub­lic ser­vice where ap­point­ments are made by in­de­pen­dent ser­vice com­mis­sions es­tab­lished by the Con­sti­tu­tion. As a re­sult, in re­spect of these pub­lic bod­ies, of­ten there is di­rect con­trol by the po­lit­i­cal ex­ec­u­tive.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, as we have seen time and time again, in such cir­cum­stances, po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance and loy­al­ty, crony­ism and nepo­tism of­ten trump com­pe­tence, ex­pe­ri­ence, mer­it and abil­i­ty when mak­ing these ap­point­ments. The Gov­ern­ment of the day, wield­ing its pow­er as prin­ci­pal share­hold­er, places the em­pha­sis on unswerv­ing ded­i­ca­tion to tow­ing the po­lit­i­cal line and con­nec­tions, caus­ing boards to dis­re­gard or ig­nore their fidu­cia­ry du­ties (which are para­mount) to the pub­lic bod­ies them­selves and by ex­ten­sion, to the coun­try that owns these state as­sets. Friends and fam­i­ly are giv­en plum po­si­tions with­out re­gard to their lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tions or ex­pe­ri­ence, the out­come of which is mis­man­age­ment, in­ef­fi­cien­cy and waste­ful­ness in our pub­lic bod­ies.

Po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance, crony­ism and nepo­tism, as the dom­i­nant fac­tors, work their way down through the sys­tem from the po­lit­i­cal ex­ec­u­tive to the boards to man­age­ment and to the work­force. A min­is­ter may di­rect the board, and the board aid­ed by sub­mis­sive man­age­ment will, pur­suant to the di­rec­tive, ter­mi­nate em­ploy­ees per­ceived to be dis­loy­al or dis­rup­tive, with­out due process.

It is no se­cret, crony­ism and nepo­tism per­haps reached an all-time high dur­ing the last ad­min­is­tra­tion. It be­came ob­vi­ous that a cer­tain se­lect group of con­trac­tors and at­tor­neys were favoured by these pub­lic bod­ies as well as by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. There ap­peared to be a com­plete sub­or­di­na­tion by these pub­lic bod­ies to the po­lit­i­cal ex­ec­u­tive in the en­gage­ment of pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices with­out re­gard to mer­it and com­pe­tence.

Then of course, there is the in­sid­i­ous mat­ter of cor­rup­tion in its dif­fer­ent forms, whether by bid-rig­ging the pro­cure­ment process, kick­backs, bribes, se­lec­tion of un­qual­i­fied and in­ex­pe­ri­enced con­trac­tors, dum­my le­gal in­voic­es to chan­nel cash pay­ments, or pay­ments made for work known to have not been done and for ser­vices known to have not been pro­vid­ed. Who can for­get the $400 mil­lion Life Sport pro­gramme, and the as­ton­ish­ing rev­e­la­tion that a com­pa­ny re­ceived $34 mil­lion for work nev­er done?

As pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed, it is there­fore im­per­a­tive that our in­sti­tu­tions eg, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, the FIU, the BIR, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, the Po­lice Ser­vice, the DPP and the courts are strength­ened so as to high­light and ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress the ex­tent of crony­ism, nepo­tism and cor­rup­tion in pub­lic bod­ies and to make er­rant boards, min­is­ters, con­trac­tors and at­tor­neys ac­count, and in some cas­es, pay.

It is equal­ly im­per­a­tive that mer­it, com­pe­tence, ex­pe­ri­ence, in­de­pen­dence, hon­esty, and suit­able qual­i­fi­ca­tions be the on­ly cri­te­ria for board ap­point­ments if we are to have a pro­duc­tive and ef­fi­cient state sec­tor which is both ac­count­able and trans­par­ent–and that ap­plies to both sides of the po­lit­i­cal di­vide.