T&T spends $20 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly–about $1.5 to $1.7 bil­lion a month–in salaries and wages for the pub­lic sec­tor and it is es­ti­mat­ed that there are at least 90,000 pub­lic ser­vants in the coun­try.

Tens of bil­lions of dol­lars have been poured in­to the pub­lic sec­tor—hir­ing of staff and pay­ing of salaries and wages—since In­de­pen­dence.

"The di­rect pub­lic ser­vice is $9 bil­lion, but the rest of the peo­ple we look af­ter and make sure they get salaries every month is an­oth­er $11 bil­lion. So, you are talk­ing $20 bil­lion a year in salaries and wages in the pub­lic sec­tor," Fi­nance MIn­is­ter Colm Im­bert had said last year.

Ac­cord­ing to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) econ­o­mist Dr Re­gan De­o­nanan, the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment's ex­pen­di­ture on wages and salaries has grown by 25 per cent over the past ten fis­cal years.

Giv­en this large pay­roll and staff, ques­tions arise in­clud­ing: Is the pub­lic sec­tor over­staffed? Are cit­i­zens get­ting val­ue and qual­i­ty ser­vice for the bil­lions of dol­lars be­ing spent? Is it fea­si­ble for the civ­il ser­vice and state-run com­pa­nies to con­tin­ue in the in­ef­fi­cient way they have been op­er­at­ing? Can they be made to run ef­fi­cient­ly?

The prob­lems of in­ef­fi­cien­cy in T&T’s pub­lic ser­vice in­clude poor cus­tomer ser­vice and low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Pub­lic ser­vants have been la­belled as lazy and in­com­pe­tent and cor­rupt in some in­stances, and cit­i­zens com­plain of too much red tape, run-around and cor­rup­tion when try­ing to get trans­ac­tions done. There are too many man­u­al pro­ce­dures and not enough on­line ser­vices, forc­ing cit­i­zens to take long hours and even months to get sim­ple trans­ac­tions com­plet­ed.

Pub­lic ser­vants, on the oth­er hand, com­plain about be­ing un­der­val­ued, over­worked and un­der­paid as many va­can­cies are wait­ing to be filled due to the long, te­dious Pub­lic Ser­vice hir­ing process. This is in ad­di­tion to some of them lack­ing the nec­es­sary tools and prop­er work­ing con­di­tion in some in­stances.

The pub­lic re­mains un­hap­py and stake­hold­ers have come out harsh­ly crit­i­cis­ing the pub­lic sec­tor for its fail­ings.

The re­cent Cab­i­net-sanc­tioned re­port on the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty of T&T re­vealed that the com­pa­ny is over­staffed with al­most 5,000 em­ploy­ees and the State gives this com­pa­ny al­most $2.5 bil­lion in sub­si­dies an­nu­al­ly. This has be­come a bur­den on tax­pay­ers.

Dur­ing a Par­lia­men­tary Joint Se­lect Meet­ing in Feb­ru­ary on the Ease of Do­ing Busi­ness, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye raised the top­ic of a cul­ture of in­dis­ci­pline and poor work eth­ic at the Board of In­land Rev­enue.

The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of T&T in a state­ment in Feb­ru­ary com­plained that the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion was not putting enough em­pha­sis on cus­tomer ser­vice.

Just last week, Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke ad­mit­ted that there was fraud among ve­hi­cle own­ers ac­cess­ing ser­vices in the Trans­port Di­vi­sion and promised more com­put­erised ser­vices soon.

CEO of the UWI Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness Mar­i­ano Browne, who was al­so a min­is­ter in the min­istry of fi­nance in the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion, lament­ed that the pub­lic ser­vice's pro­ce­dures are still pre­dom­i­nant­ly man­u­al and this has to change if the ser­vice is to be­come more ef­fi­cient.

"All files must be dig­i­talised. An ex­am­ple of this would be the Min­istry of Trade and its im­ple­men­ta­tion of the TTBi­zLink on­line plat­form. Look at the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion, if the po­lice stop you on the road they should be able to go back and check if the car is reg­is­tered, the car mod­el num­ber, and so on. That’s what they’ve been speak­ing about do­ing for the last 15 years. Un­less Gov­ern­ment fol­lows through with those de­ci­sions noth­ing hap­pens," he said.

In­ef­fi­cien­cies in pub­lic ser­vice a prod­uct of poor lead­er­ship—Nan Ram­goolam

Dr Rudrawa­tee Nan Go­sine-Ram­goolam, a for­mer diplo­mat and for­mer min­is­ter of pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion who has al­most 40 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the pub­lic ser­vice de­fend­ed pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees' work eth­ic.

"When you wake up at 5 am and get on the high­ways and by­ways and there’s a traf­fic jam, where are those peo­ple go­ing? Are they go­ing to the beach? They are go­ing to work. They are mo­ti­vat­ed, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed every day.

"Don’t say that pub­lic of­fi­cers and civ­il ser­vants are lazy,” she told the Sun­day Guardian.

She be­lieves that the chal­lenges and in­ef­fi­cien­cies in the pub­lic ser­vice are a prod­uct of poor lead­er­ship.

"Se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cers, leader and man­agers have to know how to man­age and get the best out of their staff and abide by the rules and reg­u­la­tions of terms and em­ploy­ment of ser­vice. Once they abide by that, they will have no prob­lem with pub­lic of­fi­cers. There may be some giv­ing trou­ble but they would be an ex­cep­tion to the rule.

"Some Per­ma­nent Sec­re­taries are a law on­to them­selves. Pub­lic of­fi­cers are com­pe­tent, they are trained and skilled. The prob­lem is lead­er­ship to bring out the best in them."

She en­cour­aged se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cers to su­per­vise staff to en­sure that work is done with­in time, bud­get and of high qual­i­ty.

'Lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty, need for ef­fec­tive per­for­mance man­age­ment'

A man­age­ment con­sul­tant who of­fered Strate­gic Plan­ning, Per­for­mance Man­age­ment and Train­ing and De­vel­op­ment to Petrotrin, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and Namde­v­co, blamed the struc­ture of the pub­lic ser­vice for the in­ef­fi­cien­cy.

The con­sul­tant, who asked not to be named, said, "Each min­istry is head­ed by a min­is­ter who is re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing his/her min­istry’s leg­isla­tive/pol­i­cy agen­da is rolled out to his/her min­istry. The Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (PS) is the per­son re­spon­si­ble for op­er­a­tional­is­ing that leg­isla­tive/pol­i­cy agen­da as it re­lates to serv­ing the peo­ple of T & T."

The con­sul­tant al­so spoke about the line min­is­ter who heads min­istries and who of­ten clash­es with the bu­reau­crats that run these state agen­cies.

This is an­oth­er rea­son for the in­ef­fi­cien­cies in the pub­lic sec­tor.

"The Gov­ern­ment, rep­re­sent­ed by the min­is­ter, may have a cer­tain pol­i­cy di­rec­tion for the min­istry. This po­si­tion, as in the case of WASA, may re­sult in sig­nif­i­cant changes in the sta­tus quo to which the PS/state agency heads may have be­come ac­cus­tomed. This some­times leads to the con­flict to the ex­tent that the PS/state en­ter­prise lead­er­ship may choose to sup­port the sta­tus quo and in some cas­es even un­der­mine the ini­tia­tive’s pos­si­ble suc­cess."

On the is­sue of lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty, the con­sul­tant said there needs to be a bet­ter per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tem.

"The cur­rent per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tem in the min­istries is gener­ic. It does not speak to the spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments and de­liv­er­ables for the var­i­ous po­si­tions. As such, it makes it very dif­fi­cult to hold pub­lic ser­vants to ac­count for their per­for­mance."

The con­sul­tant rec­om­mend­ed that there needs to be a more ro­bust Per­for­mance Man­age­ment sys­tem to mea­sure em­ploy­ee out­put and al­so sug­gest­ed more staff train­ing.

Re­trench­ing em­ploy­ees

Econ­o­mist Dr Ter­rence Far­rell has es­ti­mat­ed that there are cur­rent­ly al­most 90,000 em­ploy­ees in the pub­lic ser­vice in T&T, not count­ing those en­sconced in the many state en­ter­pris­es and statu­to­ry bod­ies.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian re­cent­ly, Far­rell sug­gest­ed that T&T’s econ­o­my is in deep trou­ble and can­not avoid cut­ting the size of the pub­lic ser­vice and in­creas­ing util­i­ty rates. This sug­ges­tion has met with mixed re­spons­es.

Re­gard­ing the is­sue of over­staffing, the man­age­ment con­sul­tant agreed that the Pub­lic Ser­vice needs to cut back its work­ers. "The pub­lic ser­vice is over­staffed to the ex­tent that pub­lic ser­vants get in each oth­er’s way in the per­for­mance of their func­tions re­sult­ing in dou­ble work, in­ef­fi­cien­cy and a gen­er­al lack of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty."

The con­sul­tant, while propos­ing a re­duc­tion in the num­ber of peo­ple em­ployed in the pub­lic ser­vice, ad­vised that the Gov­ern­ment should be strate­gic about this move as the coun­try is in the mid­dle of an eco­nom­ic cri­sis.

"Tim­ing is every­thing. Hav­ing come through a very try­ing year with in­creas­ing busi­ness clo­sures and un­em­ploy­ment, I would sug­gest a re­pur­pos­ing of pub­lic ser­vants in­to the sec­tors con­sis­tent with the coun­try’s agri­cul­ture, mar­itime and tourism sec­tors and the like."

Go­sine-Ram­goolam, on the oth­er hand, crit­i­cised any po­si­tions that ad­vo­cate send­ing em­ploy­ees in the pub­lic sec­tor home say­ing that there should be a man­pow­er au­dit of what skills are nec­es­sary and how they should be matched be­fore any­one talks about cut­ting staff.

"If the pub­lic ser­vice func­tions the way it should with all those jok­ers at the top do­ing their work at every lev­el, there would be so much pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in T&T that we wouldn’t have to wor­ry about salaries paid to work­ers. The same ap­plies to WASA and T&TEC, Min­istry of Health and so on."

She al­so warned about send­ing work­ers home dur­ing the cur­rent eco­nom­ic down­turn and oth­er poor work­ing con­di­tions.

"There will be so­cial prob­lems of hav­ing un­em­ployed peo­ple. Peo­ple will steal to mind their chil­dren. We will soon have thou­sands of ed­u­cat­ed va­grants on the streets."

Econ­o­mist De­o­nanan told the Sun­day Guardian via email that there may be neg­a­tive ef­fects from lay­ing off pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

"In an econ­o­my where the pub­lic sec­tor is a large em­ploy­er of labour, re­trench­ment of this work­force with­out the nec­es­sary safe­ty nets or mar­ket con­di­tions can lead to neg­a­tive ef­fects on the labour force. This may in­clude long-term un­em­ploy­ment for per­sons who can­not be ab­sorbed by the pri­vate sec­tor.

"In such a case, pay­ments to un­em­ploy­ment ben­e­fits will in­crease, though to a less­er ex­tent than the re­duc­tion in spend­ing on salaries.

"An in­crease in un­em­ploy­ment al­so re­duces na­tion­al out­put. The neg­a­tive ef­fects of such a re­duc­tion in the pub­lic sec­tor work­force may be ex­ac­er­bat­ed in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate."

Salary ne­go­ti­a­tions

At the end of Feb­ru­ary, PSA Pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke warned the Gov­ern­ment about mak­ing cuts to the pub­lic ser­vice. His call to pub­lic ser­vants to stay away from work some two weeks ago, which many work­ers did not heed, led to the Em­ploy­ers Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA) pub­licly thank­ing work­ers for go­ing out to work and ig­nor­ing the union leader's call to stay at home.

In 2011, The PSA set­tled for five per cent for the pe­ri­od 2008 to 2010.

In 2015, the PSA has signed off on a new col­lec­tive agree­ment with Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Stephanie Lewis for the 14 per cent salary in­crease which cov­ers the pe­ri­od 2011 to 2013.

At present, en­try range 4 work­ers at the min­i­mum wage in the salary scale are re­ceiv­ing $4,537. The high­est salary at range 68 in the last ne­go­ti­a­tion set­tle­ment is in the range of $16,000 month­ly.

In Feb­ru­ary, Im­bert added that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic had cut T&T’s en­er­gy rev­enues by $2 bil­lion so far in 2021, so the Gov­ern­ment can­not pay ex­ces­sive wage hikes but just seek to main­tain pub­lic sec­tor jobs and ser­vices.

Com­ment­ing on the unions' roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, Go­sine-Ram­goolam said it was crit­i­cal.

"The unions’ role is to safe­guard the terms and con­di­tions of the em­ploy­ee ser­vice. The au­thor­i­ties should not be abus­ing any­body."

Try­ing to de­stroy unions, she said, would on­ly lead to "mod­ern-day slav­ery."

Mod­ern unions, she said, how­ev­er, need to change their strat­e­gy when ne­go­ti­at­ing.

The man­age­ment con­sul­tant, mean­while, added that "the tra­di­tion­al ag­gres­sive ap­proach­es" adopt­ed by the union do not make for a pro­gres­sive and pro­duc­tive re­la­tion­ship.

Mon­ey spent on the pub­lic ser­vice

Cen­tral Bank of T&T da­ta shows that the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to in­vest bil­lions in the pub­lic sec­tor.

De­o­nanan re­ferred to da­ta that shows trans­fer pay­ments from Gov­ern­ment rev­enue to state en­ter­pris­es, statu­to­ry boards and sim­i­lar bod­ies amount­ed to $8.5 bil­lion (TT) in the fis­cal year 2019/2020 alone.

Fi­nanc­ing of the 2021 Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) high­lights mon­ey spent on pub­lic sec­tor projects.

The 2021 PSIP com­pris­es $4.1 bil­lion which is split be­tween the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund (CF) in the amount of $2.2 bil­lion and the In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Fund (IDF) in the amount of $1.8 bil­lion.

Work­ers 'spir­it bro­ken'

Pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees are usu­al­ly stereo­typed as be­ing lazy and un­pro­duc­tive com­pared to their coun­ter­parts in the pri­vate sec­tor. The prob­lems at WASA and oth­er state-run en­ti­ties have raised the de­bate about the con­di­tions un­der which they work and how much they pro­duce.

Two pub­lic of­fi­cers spoke to the Sun­day Guardian about their ex­pe­ri­ences in the Pub­lic Ser­vice. One has been there for rough­ly 25 years, the oth­er has been there for close to two years.

COOK

A work­er who holds the po­si­tion of act­ing cook and pre­ferred not to be named said pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees work hard but some­times the poor con­di­tions un­der which they are forced to work re­sult in low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and poor cus­tomer ser­vice.

At 52 years old, she has been in the pub­lic ser­vice for al­most 25 years cook­ing and teach­ing dance in youth camps over the years. She is cur­rent­ly at the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vices.

She is hap­py with the con­tri­bu­tion she has made over the years.

"I am al­so a Best Vil­lage tu­tor. I was at the Girl’s youth camp in El Do­ra­do and I do dance and dra­ma and I was able to bring that to the camp with the help of the di­rec­tors. It was a pret­ty ex­cit­ing and mean­ing­ful time for me to see young per­sons re­act to cul­ture. That camp was closed down in 2011."

De­spite pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ences, she al­so spoke about the dark­er side of work­ing in the pub­lic ser­vice.

"There are some con­di­tions that cre­ate the il­lu­sion that some pub­lic of­fi­cers are lazy and don’t know about cus­tomer ser­vice. An ex­am­ple is peo­ple who talk about the cashiers at the Li­cens­ing Of­fice and say they nev­er there and oth­er prob­lems. When they’re there they don’t know how to talk to the pub­lic. Sup­posed they short staffed and this of­fi­cer has been do­ing dou­ble work? Sup­posed the AC or fan in the of­fice isn’t work­ing? The pub­lic doesn’t know these things."

She said man­agers need to talk to work­ers more to find out what their prob­lems are and to look for so­lu­tions.

She said some of the man­agers in the pub­lic ser­vices are ar­ro­gant and they do noth­ing to mo­ti­vate low­er-lev­el work­ers.

The work­er com­pared it to a type of caste or class sys­tem and called it "range-ism" based on the dif­fer­ent ranges in the pub­lic ser­vices.

"Man­age­ment has been a chal­lenge. You know how there are clas­sism and colourism? I call it ‘range-ism’ in the pub­lic ser­vice as once you are not at the high­er ranges, they don’t give you the re­spect you de­serve for your ideas.

"Man­age­ment in the pub­lic ser­vice would be the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and then the heads of de­part­ment. So in their minds, when they look at me, I’m just a cook and I don’t have a de­gree or Mas­ter’s, and they don’t take my rec­om­men­da­tions se­ri­ous­ly. The typ­ists and cooks, peo­ple like us are in the low­er range."

Her cur­rent salary is $6,800 month­ly which she says is "not much". She be­lieves that not all the blame should be put on the Gov­ern­ment for the small salaries of some pub­lic of­fi­cers and said that the union should al­so take the blame as it is their job to prop­er­ly bar­gain on be­half of em­ploy­ees.

"I am pay­ing a union to work for me and PSA has not been do­ing what they should be do­ing on be­half of work­ers."

PSY­CHI­ATRIC NURSE

A psy­chi­atric nurse who has been work­ing at St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal for close to two years is pas­sion­ate about his job and the work he does to help pa­tients but at times feels dis­grun­tled by the sys­tem.

The St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal falls un­der the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA).

The nurse who is now 32 years spoke to the Sun­day Guardian on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

"I stud­ied and trained for years at the Psy­chi­atric School of Nurs­ing be­fore I was em­ployed here. Af­ter com­plet­ing my stud­ies, I wait­ed for two years be­fore they called and I was hap­py as this is what I want­ed to do. I soon learned that as a psy­chi­a­trist nurse, you’re forced to work to­wards your ideals in a not so ide­al­is­tic en­vi­ron­ment."

Some of the prob­lems at the hos­pi­tal he list­ed in­clude short­age of nurs­es on staff, lack of wa­ter, a short­age of some drugs at times, and not enough sup­port from man­age­ment to come up with so­lu­tions.

He gave the ex­am­ple of how ad­min­is­tra­tive in­ef­fi­cien­cies can fa­tal­ly af­fect nurs­es.

"There are times that med­ica­tion run out and we have to use sub­sti­tutes. I work on an ag­gres­sive ward where pa­tients phys­i­cal­ly at­tack nurs­es. Imag­ine when you don’t have med­ica­tion to give the pa­tients, you could be in prob­lems. Some days we have no wa­ter and the toi­lets are over­flow­ing, yet we have to give op­ti­mum per­for­mance."

De­spite their hard work and sac­ri­fices, he feels as if nurs­es do not get the re­spect they de­serve from the pub­lic.

"You are re­quired to help some pa­tients like bathing, get­ting dressed, brush­ing their teeth. You must be able to form a ther­a­peu­tic re­la­tion­ship with every pa­tient you guide. That’s the dif­fer­ence be­tween a gen­er­al nurse and a psy­chi­atric nurse. It is said that some peo­ple in the gen­er­al pub­lic re­fer to psy­chi­a­trist nurs­es as glo­ri­fied babysit­ters."

With his ba­sic salary and al­lowances, he earns $9,200 month­ly which he says is still less than oth­er pro­fes­sion­als or even oth­er work­ers in the oth­er ser­vices like po­lice of­fi­cers.

He said when he first came in­to the sys­tem, he thought he could have changed every­thing but he now re­alis­es that he is just a cog in the wheel in a bro­ken sys­tem.

"When I just came here they use to call me ‘best nurse’ as I thought I could change every­thing. Then the times reach when you re­alise the sys­tem is hard to change. My spir­it is bro­ken."