Ali­cia Llanos

Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Rudrawa­tee Nan Ram­goolam says by years' end the min­istry will launch a trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tive with­in the pub­lic ser­vice. She was speak­ing yes­ter­day at a sem­i­nar host­ed by the Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

Its theme was Gen­der Equal­i­ty In The Work Place.Re­spond­ing to her min­istry's role in em­ploy­ee re­la­tions, she said the min­istry cur­rent­ly was eval­u­at­ing the em­ploy­ee base and poli­cies with­in the pub­lic ser­vice.She said: "We are cur­rent­ly do­ing skills eval­u­a­tions to see whether we are staffed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly with the com­pe­ten­cy and skills re­quired.

"With­in the pub­lic ser­vice we are cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing in job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cis­es. As jobs change you need to do eval­u­a­tions to de­ter­mine the worth of the job to the or­gan­i­sa­tion and from there com­pen­sa­tion can be pitched."

She said the goal was to not change the pub­lic ser­vice but to im­prove on ex­ist­ing mech­a­nisms with­in the pub­lic ser­vice to meet the needs of so­ci­ety.

Ram­goolam said: "The Gov­ern­ment has ac­knowl­edged its role in pro­tect­ing the rights of work­ers and there­fore work place is­sues, such as sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, dis­crim­i­na­tion, un­equal op­por­tu­ni­ties, un­suit­able work­ing con­di­tions and in­equitable com­pen­sa­tion, will be giv­en new at­ten­tion."

She said the Gov­ern­ment would be re­view­ing in­ter­na­tion­al labour laws to en­sure they re­flect­ed a gen­der sen­si­tive out­look.

She said there was need to look at gen­der roles and ex­pec­ta­tions with­in the pub­lic sec­tor, fo­cus­ing on is­sues of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and gen­der in­equal­i­ty.Ram­goolam said the is­sue of ma­ter­ni­ty pro­tec­tion would be ad­dressed to en­sure moth­er­hood and preg­nan­cy did not be­come a cause of dis­crim­i­na­tion in the ar­eas of ac­cess to train­ing, pay and job mo­bil­i­ty.

She said the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Act and the Na­tion­al Pen­sion Act al­so would be re­viewed.