With years of per­for­mance is­sues plagu­ing the Pub­lic Ser­vice, for­mer deputy gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank, Dr Ter­rance Far­rel, sug­gests giv­ing the Prime Min­is­ter the pow­er to se­lect pub­lic of­fi­cers.

Fea­tur­ing on the gov­ern­ment's sec­ond seg­ment of its Thought Lead­er­ship Se­ries, Far­rel, an econ­o­mist, said the un­easi­ness for peo­ple with this idea, par­tic­u­lar­ly in T&T and Guyana, was the trib­al na­ture of the so­ci­eties and pol­i­tics. He said that cit­i­zens' per­cep­tion is that if a prime min­is­ter got the pow­er to choose per­ma­nent sec­re­taries of min­istries, he or she would sim­ply put their co-eth­nics in­to those po­si­tions, ir­re­spec­tive of ca­pa­bil­i­ties and com­pe­ten­cies. There­fore, the coun­tries get a trib­al pub­lic ser­vice.

“I am say­ing, how­ev­er, that what you need to do is, you need to give the gov­ern­ment of the day and to the prime min­is­ter and his min­is­ters the abil­i­ty to de­cide since they are ac­count­able. They are ac­count­able, ul­ti­mate­ly to the peo­ple of the coun­try,” Far­rel said.

He be­lieves that if peo­ple vot­ed for a gov­ern­ment based on its vi­sion, the ad­min­is­tra­tion should have con­trol of the pub­lic ser­vice to car­ry out its plans. Far­rel not­ed that cit­i­zens tend to blame the gov­ern­ment for a high crime rate, even though the ex­ec­u­tive can­not se­lect the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice on its own.  As for ac­count­abil­i­ty, he said it would be the peo­ple's job, not on­ly at elec­tions but in tak­ing to the streets as they did on the Sec­tion 34 con­tro­ver­sy in 2012.

“We had a sit­u­a­tion the oth­er day where the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad & To­ba­go, Dr Row­ley, said ‘there is noth­ing I can do. All I can do is give the po­lice the re­sources for them to work, give them the cars and give them the guns and then I leave it to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to get the job done.’ But if in the es­ti­ma­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter, who is the chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, that there is a bet­ter per­son out there who can do that job, some­body who un­der­stands what the gov­ern­ment is try­ing to achieve, how it wants to achieve it, then why should not the Prime Min­is­ter have the au­thor­i­ty to be able to iden­ti­fy that per­son and se­lect that per­son,” Far­rel said.

He said there are ex­am­ples in Bar­ba­dos and Cana­da where the prime min­is­ter could se­lect cer­tain pub­lic of­fi­cers. Far­rel not­ed that many peo­ple per­ceive the Pub­lic Ser­vice as in­ef­fi­cient and hos­tile to cit­i­zens. He ac­knowl­edged the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion's ad­mis­sion of in­ef­fi­cien­cies in its hu­man re­source sys­tem and out­dat­ed tech­nol­o­gy, in­fra­struc­ture, job de­scrip­tions and func­tions.  Its role in pro­vid­ing pol­i­cy ad­vice to the gov­ern­ment is less forth­com­ing, and most min­is­ters are re­luc­tant to com­ment on the com­pe­tence of their pub­lic ser­vants. Far­rel said gov­ern­ments be­gan seek­ing ad­vice out­side the Pub­lic Ser­vice, opt­ing for con­sul­tants and con­trac­tors to ful­fil its ob­jec­tives.

It al­so cre­at­ed State en­ter­pris­es and statu­to­ry bod­ies to as­sist in de­vel­op­ing and im­ple­ment­ing poli­cies. 

Some is­sues in the Pub­lic Ser­vice stems from the Con­sti­tu­tion, such as the role of ser­vice com­mis­sions like the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. Far­rel high­light­ed that school prin­ci­pals could not dis­ci­pline teach­ers as it was the role of the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC). Min­is­ters of Ed­u­ca­tion in the past com­plained about the slow pace of the TSC.

Over the years, the Min­is­ters showed dis­sat­is­fac­tion over their in­abil­i­ty to get ac­tion from the TSC. But in the Com­mis­sions' de­fence, Far­rel said com­mis­sion­ers meet pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly and do not over­see these func­tions on a full-time ba­sis. It is the same in the min­istries where per­ma­nent sec­re­taries no longer both­er with per­for­mance ap­praisals as they can­not dis­ci­pline their staff. Far­rel said a fail­ure to up­grade the pub­lic ser­vice comes as the par­ties in­volved blame each oth­er. He said trade unions blame man­agers while the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate ig­nores the is­sue be­cause of its po­ten­tial po­lit­i­cal cost.