Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment should have a plan on how the pub­lic sec­tor will be man­aged if it is to pre­vent a break­down of ser­vices once the Gov­ern­ment “safe zone” ini­tia­tive at Gov­ern­ment work­places is im­ple­ment­ed by mid-Jan­u­ary.

This is the view of sev­er­al ex­perts who spoke to the Sun­day Guardian.

The ul­ti­ma­tum for pub­lic ser­vants to get vac­ci­nat­ed or they will not be paid is the lat­est chap­ter in the long de­bate on pub­lic sec­tor man­age­ment.

It was al­so an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is­sue raised by In­dus­tri­al Court Pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix last Sep­tem­ber.

She warned em­ploy­ers, stat­ing they could not uni­lat­er­al­ly in­tro­duce COVID-19 poli­cies with­out con­sul­ta­tion.

Last De­cem­ber, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said those pub­lic ser­vants who are not vac­ci­nat­ed will not be phys­i­cal­ly al­lowed in Gov­ern­ment work­places. And in essence, would not be paid as Gov­ern­ment work­places were now de­clared “safe zones.”

How­ev­er, it was not the first time that he had sent a stern mes­sage to the em­ploy­ees of the pub­lic ser­vice.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Prime Min­is­ter’s res­i­dence in Oc­to­ber 2020, the Prime Min­is­ter said some pub­lic ser­vants have been avoid­ing work and us­ing the pan­dem­ic as their ex­cuse for do­ing so.

He said pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at one un­named min­istry had dropped by 97.5 per cent.

In 2020, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said that the pub­lic sec­tor wage bill is $20 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly and is dif­fi­cult to sus­tain.

In Feb­ru­ary 2021, ac­cord­ing to a Busi­ness Guardian ar­ti­cle, econ­o­mist Dr Ter­rence Far­rell said the coun­try must live with­in its means and the Gov­ern­ment can­not avoid cut­ting the size of the pub­lic ser­vice.

Far­rell has es­ti­mat­ed that there are at least 90,000 pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees not count­ing those em­ployed at state com­pa­nies and statu­to­ry boards.

Apart from re­trench­ing pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees, should salaries be cut?

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) econ­o­mist Dr Re­gan De­o­nanan in 2021, the ma­jor por­tion of T&T’s gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture bill is trans­fers and sub­si­dies, which amount­ed to 54 per cent of to­tal ex­pen­di­ture in the fis­cal year 2019/2020.

So, it is not pub­lic sec­tor wages that should be cut but rather Gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies, ac­cord­ing to Dr De­o­nanan.

Giv­en these prob­lems that ex­ist­ed long be­fore the Prime Min­is­ter’s lat­est state­ments, it rais­es the ques­tion of how this lat­est pol­i­cy de­ci­sion will im­pact the pub­lic ser­vice and its long-stand­ing is­sues.

For­mer Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter and uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er in man­age­ment stud­ies Rudrawa­tee Nan Go­sine-Ram­goolam told the Sun­day Guardian that she hopes the Gov­ern­ment has a plan on how the pub­lic sec­tor will be ad­min­is­tered if many em­ploy­ees are not vac­ci­nat­ed and large num­bers are fur­loughed.

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon has warned that there could be se­ri­ous reper­cus­sions on how the pub­lic ser­vice and oth­er state gov­erned agen­cies will func­tion if many em­ploy­ees are laid off.

In a re­ply to a mes­sage from the Sun­day Guardian about how vac­ci­na­tion rates are go­ing among pub­lic ser­vants, the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Allyson West replied say­ing that “in­ter­nal dis­cus­sions are tak­ing place,” and she will get back with the in­for­ma­tion once those dis­cus­sions are com­plet­ed.

Im­pli­ca­tion on pub­lic ser­vice

Go­sine-Ram­goolam said she does not want to use the word “chaos” to de­scribe the pos­si­ble sce­nario when the Gov­ern­ment be­gins to im­ple­ment its pol­i­cy but be­lieves that the Gov­ern­ment must have a con­tin­gency plan to man­age the pub­lic sec­tor to avoid it be­ing shut down.

“I be­lieve that the man­agers have op­tions as pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees can work from home. I have read news re­ports that they have be­gun or­gan­is­ing for pub­lic of­fi­cers to work from home. I am not sure of the de­tails. If there is a stand-off dur­ing this tran­si­tion dur­ing this stand­off and the court has to in­ter­vene, then it is up to the man­agers and per­ma­nent sec­re­taries to de­ter­mine how they would be work­ing from home. What are their as­sign­ments, what they have to do, what re­ports they have to sub­mit, how do we make pay­ments on­line? I be­lieve if this is done right there will be no is­sues and the work will con­tin­ue.”

She al­so said that it has reached the stage where the courts will de­cide on the mat­ter as the pop­u­la­tion is “to­tal­ly con­fused.”

“You are go­ing to have pub­lic of­fi­cers who would vac­ci­nate them­selves based on the edict giv­en by the Prime Min­is­ter and the fear of not be­ing paid and the bot­tom line that mankind has to work to eat. There are oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cers who come hell or high wa­ter are afraid of tak­ing the vac­cines. Giv­en the trade unions and their stance, it is now an is­sue for the law to de­cide.”

She said the unions have ar­gued that the law does not per­mit em­ploy­ees to in­di­cate their vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus be­cause that is a med­ical record and it is con­fi­den­tial.

She al­so said there are many op­tions avail­able and one of them could be that the vac­ci­nat­ed em­ploy­ees are al­lowed in Gov­ern­ment work­places while the un­vac­ci­nat­ed em­ploy­ees can work from home.

She warned that this is not a time for con­fronta­tion and urged all sec­tors of the coun­try to have di­a­logue for the good of the na­tion.

“It is an is­sue not of con­fronta­tion but one of co-op­er­a­tion to keep us mov­ing and go­ing. We can­not say it is my way or the high­way.”

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon said the an­swer to a more ef­fi­cient pub­lic sec­tor does not on­ly lie in cut­ting the size of the pub­lic sec­tor even if it is part of the so­lu­tion.

“We must re­mem­ber that COVID has changed the whole dy­nam­ic of em­ploy­er and em­ploy­ee, health, and many things in the econ­o­my. There­fore we need to look at the pub­lic sec­tor and to look at the econ­o­my and so­cial is­sues with a some­what dif­fer­ent lens to what we would have looked at, say pre-COVID. By all means, we want a more mod­ern, so­phis­ti­cat­ed pub­lic ser­vice. Giv­en the con­text of how peo­ple can work in the of­fice, we need to fac­tor all of this in­to the for­mu­la and to come up with what is best.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment should have con­sid­ered all their op­tions by now.

“If you lay off pub­lic ser­vants if you fur­lough them when there are cer­tain im­pli­ca­tions as to how pub­lic ser­vices are go­ing to be de­liv­ered to the cit­i­zen­ry in an ef­fi­cient man­ner. In oth­er words, if you have few­er pub­lic ser­vants you still have to an­swer the ques­tion as to is that go­ing to weak­en the de­liv­ery of pub­lic ser­vices or is it go­ing to strength­en it, over what pe­ri­od of time.”

He said con­fronta­tion is not the an­swer and it will on­ly lead to in­sta­bil­i­ty and he called for unions and the Gov­ern­ment to sit to­geth­er to come up with so­lu­tions.

“I will call for the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Coun­cil to be re-es­tab­lished. This can on­ly be sort­ed out through di­a­logue. I ac­cept the fact that some pub­lic ser­vants will not want to work in an en­vi­ron­ment where there are un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple and the union must un­der­stand that. It is not fair to vac­ci­nat­ed pub­lic ser­vants. If the unions go out there and take a bad john ap­proach that will not be help­ful to any­one.”

He added that the is­sue of COVID comes on the heel of the oth­er chal­lenges that the pub­lic ser­vice has in­clud­ing low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, how peo­ple are com­pen­sat­ed, the size of the pub­lic ser­vice, and oth­er prob­lems but he not­ed that the prob­lem of COVID is a prob­lem of “life and death.”

He con­clud­ed by say­ing that the Gov­ern­ment has to con­sid­er the “reper­cus­sions” of all de­ci­sions that they make.

“They must en­sure that what­ev­er hap­pens that ser­vices to the pub­lic con­tin­ue.”

Unions

In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions con­sul­tant Robert Giusep­pi told the Sun­day Guardian that the coun­try and the world live in dif­fer­ent and dan­ger­ous times and the de­bate about work­ers’ rights dur­ing the pan­dem­ic is no “or­di­nary in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions griev­ance.”

He said it is not on­ly the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act (IRA) that should be amend­ed and up­dat­ed for mod­ern times and the new pan­dem­ic en­vi­ron­ment but al­so oth­er laws that ex­ist in the coun­try.

He al­so crit­i­cised trade unions say­ing so far they have not made any con­crete pro­pos­als and he en­cour­aged them to meet with the Gov­ern­ment and busi­ness sec­tor to find so­lu­tions for the press­ing needs of the coun­try.

New Pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Leroy Bap­tiste in a press con­fer­ence last week made it clear that pub­lic of­fi­cers are un­der no le­gal oblig­a­tion to pro­vide their vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus to their em­ploy­er.

Pres­i­dent of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) An­cel Ro­get called up­on all vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed em­ploy­ees to re­port for work as nor­mal. He said so speak­ing on the steps of the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs on Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain last week.

TTUTA To­ba­go Of­fi­cer Bran­don Roberts is not in sup­port of the Gov­ern­ment’s vac­ci­na­tion man­date for pub­lic ser­vants.

He called for the se­cu­ri­ty of tenure for vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed em­ploy­ees.