KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s lat­est re­port has high­light­ed the State’s con­tin­ued re­liance on con­tract and short-term em­ploy­ment along­side short­com­ings in pol­i­cy and com­pli­ance, point­ing out that Gov­ern­ment spent more than $1.79 bil­lion on tem­po­rary staffing arrange­ments across the pub­lic ser­vice in 2025.

The re­port shows $1.414 bil­lion was spent on con­tract em­ploy­ment, while a fur­ther $374.8 mil­lion was ex­pend­ed on short-term em­ploy­ment, bring­ing to­tal spend­ing on tem­po­rary staffing mech­a­nisms to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.79 bil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year.

Con­tract em­ploy­ment, as de­fined in the Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture, is in­tend­ed for cas­es where there is an ur­gent need for staff, where work is tied to projects of lim­it­ed du­ra­tion, or where spe­cialised skills are un­avail­able with­in the es­tab­lished pub­lic ser­vice.

It al­so cov­ers Cab­i­net-ap­proved con­tracts for month­ly-paid of­fi­cers en­gaged for at least one year un­der con­di­tions set by the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer.

How­ev­er, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al not­ed that some po­si­tions have been con­tract­ed out for years, sug­gest­ing long-term re­liance on what is de­signed to be a tem­po­rary staffing arrange­ment. To­tal spend­ing in this cat­e­go­ry rose by two per cent com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year.

Along­side this, the re­port high­light­ed weak­ness­es in a ma­jor re­form ef­fort in­tend­ed to re­view and ra­tio­nalise pub­lic ser­vice posts.

A Civ­il Ser­vice Job Eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise, con­tract­ed to Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers in 2020 with a planned two-year time­line, was re­port­ed to be 75 per cent com­plete at the end of the fi­nan­cial year.

Ex­pen­di­ture stood at $35.48 mil­lion, while key de­liv­er­ables, in­clud­ing a Com­pen­sa­tion Sur­vey Re­port sub­mit­ted in Sep­tem­ber 2024, were re­ject­ed by the Per­son­nel De­part­ment.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al al­so point­ed to dis­putes be­tween the Per­son­nel De­part­ment and the con­trac­tor over cost over­runs, scope of work and con­tract in­ter­pre­ta­tion, with both par­ties seek­ing le­gal clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

In a sep­a­rate find­ing, the re­port high­light­ed con­cerns over short-term em­ploy­ment, de­fined as work not ex­ceed­ing six months, in Gov­ern­ment de­part­ments and agen­cies.

Spend­ing in this cat­e­go­ry rose by sev­en per cent, in­creas­ing from $350 mil­lion to $374.8 mil­lion.

While au­thor­i­ty for short-term hir­ing rests with ac­count­ing of­fi­cers, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al found an ab­sence of doc­u­ment­ed pol­i­cy across min­istries and de­part­ments gov­ern­ing re­cruit­ment un­der these arrange­ments. The re­port fur­ther not­ed mul­ti­ple in­stances where em­ploy­ment terms ex­ceed­ed six months, con­trary to the de­f­i­n­i­tion of short-term work.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there were many in­stances of per­sons’ terms of em­ploy­ment ex­ceed­ing six months. As pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed, this is con­trary to good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices and ex­pos­es the Gov­ern­ment to li­a­bil­i­ty,” the re­port stat­ed.

At the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, an ex­am­i­na­tion of records re­vealed that for a num­ber of years, six peo­ple were em­ployed for an ini­tial six-month pe­ri­od, fol­lowed by sub­se­quent six-month pe­ri­ods—a prac­tice that has been go­ing on for years.

High lev­els of ex­pen­di­ture were record­ed across sev­er­al ma­jor min­istries and agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs, the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion, the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.