Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al is again de­fend­ing him­self against al­le­ga­tions made by his staff through their union, the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), that he is abus­ing his pow­er.

In a let­ter to PSA’s sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent Avinash Ma­hara­jh, dat­ed June 18, Din­di­al not­ed that the claims made against him are all anony­mous, deny­ing him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to face his ac­cuser/s. He penned that the com­mon thread in the 13 com­plaints against him seemed to be a re­sis­tance to the ad­her­ence to rules, reg­u­la­tions, poli­cies, and ac­cept­able prac­tices.

“It would ap­pear that the per­sons who have ex­pressed these con­cerns are averse to be­ing held ac­count­able and would like to do as they please with im­puni­ty. As the CPO and the em­ploy­er, as iden­ti­fied in the statute, who is the au­thor of the var­i­ous poli­cies, terms and con­di­tions, it is there­fore my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to com­ply with same and en­sure that my staff al­so com­ply with same.”

Last month, Din­di­al promised to meet with Ma­hara­jh on al­le­ga­tions that he was abus­ing his pow­er. The claim came months af­ter staff wrote to the union ac­cus­ing Din­di­al, a re­tired De­fence Force of­fi­cer, of run­ning the CPO’s of­fice “like a boot camp.”

In re­sponse to the claims made in Feb­ru­ary, Din­di­al said they were un­for­tu­nate and un­found­ed. Last month, he told the union that the chan­nel to ad­dress work­ers’ griev­ances was through the joint con­sul­ta­tive com­mit­tee, which at the time was not done.

Re­spond­ing to some of the 13 com­plaints, Din­di­al said the re­moval of some em­ploy­ees from the com­put­erised pay­roll sys­tem to a man­u­al one had im­proved ab­sen­teeism. He added that on the rare oc­ca­sions this was done, there was a marked im­prove­ment in ab­sen­teeism.

He said the de­ci­sion was tak­en af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and in keep­ing with the Comp­trol­ler of Ac­counts Cir­cu­lar No 20 dat­ed Au­gust 17, 1988. He said that dur­ing his tenure as CPO, over 90 per cent of his staff were up­skilled, with train­ing be­ing done with­in and out­side of work­ing hours, and de­nied that train­ing was manda­to­ry.

He wrote that pro­mo­tions all fell with­in the purview of the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

“It is in­cum­bent on all pub­lic of­fi­cers to bear in mind that they are be­ing paid out of the pub­lic purse for per­for­mance of du­ties that have far-reach­ing im­pact on the so­ci­ety and coun­try, and as such are ex­pect­ed to earn their salary. There­fore, it is with deep con­cern I note that I am be­ing ques­tioned for not con­don­ing delin­quen­cy,” Din­di­al wrote in re­sponse to a com­plaint that he was pro­hibit­ing free move­ment and con­gre­gat­ing with­in the build­ing.

Din­di­al said the re­stric­tion for the base­ment was due to safe­ty con­cerns af­ter there was unau­tho­rised en­try to the build­ing.

Din­di­al told Ma­hara­jh that most of the 13 com­plaints were pre­vi­ous­ly raised in some vari­a­tion, and he was not go­ing to re­spond to them again.