Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Chair­man of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Chair­man (PSC) Win­ston Rud­der says the Gov­ern­ment is of­fer­ing con­tract po­si­tions in their re­cruit­ment dri­ve. As such, he ex­plained, it is le­gal for the Gov­ern­ment to ad­ver­tise and of­fer jobs as part of the Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve via Em­ployTT.

Rud­der’s as­sur­ance comes af­ter a few se­nior pub­lic work­ers con­tact­ed Guardian Me­dia, ques­tion­ing the le­gal­i­ty of the dri­ve op­er­at­ing out­side of the PSC.

Some pub­lic work­ers com­plained that they were re­turned to ju­nior posts af­ter act­ing stints in more se­nior po­si­tions. Oth­ers wor­ried that po­si­tions that they have been seek­ing for years may be filled by peo­ple with the “right con­nec­tions”.

“The es­tab­lished po­si­tions in the pub­lic ser­vice–these are un­der, by con­sti­tu­tion­al man­date, the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. The Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion is the on­ly in­sti­tu­tion that re­cruits and ap­points per­son­nel to po­si­tions in the pub­lic ser­vice es­tab­lish­ment,” Rud­der said.

“How­ev­er, min­istries and de­part­ments do ad­ver­tise and of­fer con­tract jobs, but that is some­thing dif­fer­ent from the es­tab­lished pub­lic ser­vice po­si­tions. The posts that are ad­ver­tised, from what I am ad­vised, would have to be con­tract po­si­tions of­fered by min­istries and de­part­ments, which is some­thing that is done in a nor­mal course.”

Public Service Commission Chairman, Winston Rudder

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve’s web­site, both month­ly-paid and dai­ly-rat­ed po­si­tions are avail­able.

• The re­cruit­ment dri­ve claims to of­fer more than 20,450 jobs across 25 min­istries.

• The on­line por­tal lists ap­prox­i­mate­ly 17,949 month­ly and dai­ly paid po­si­tions.

• The Works and Trans­port Min­istry has the most va­can­cies, with 2,634.

• The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry has the sec­ond most, with 1,131.

“They are ba­si­cal­ly tram­pling on our con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. It’s crazy. I don’t know if they were not legal­ly ad­vised prop­er­ly, but all va­cant posts are sup­posed to be ad­ver­tised through the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sions,” one se­nior min­istry em­ploy­ee said.

“Not like this. It’s sup­posed to be done on mer­it and se­nior­i­ty, not a pub­lic ad­ver­tise­ment. It’s caus­ing a bit of a ruckus, and no­body is say­ing any­thing. I was al­ready re­moved from my post, and I’m not even af­fil­i­at­ed with any par­ty. I just do my job the best that I can, and I was tar­get­ed.”

At­tempts to find out from Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas whether the union re­ceived any writ­ten com­plaints were un­suc­cess­ful.

Dr Anthony Gonzales

Econ­o­mist: Noth­ing wrong with re­cruit­ment dri­ve if jobs sus­tain­able

Ac­cord­ing to econ­o­mist Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, noth­ing is wrong with the re­cruit­ment dri­ve, as long as it pro­vides mean­ing­ful, sus­tain­able jobs with de­cent pay.

He said so­ci­ety was fail­ing to gen­er­ate enough jobs, adding that the large num­ber of peo­ple who have ap­plied for the dri­ve is as­ton­ish­ing.

“There are a lot of peo­ple with­out jobs. If these are jobs that are not be­ing filled in the civ­il ser­vice, and they are need­ed, then noth­ing wrong with it. If you are just try­ing to cre­ate work to ab­sorb un­em­ployed per­sons, then you will have a prob­lem at a point in time.

“We have a prob­lem of un­em­ployed and un­der­em­ployed peo­ple, eh. Even though we have an age­ing so­ci­ety, we have a prob­lem be­cause so­ci­ety has not been able to cre­ate enough jobs. CEPEP, URP and the en­vi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion or­gan­i­sa­tions, where we em­ploy a lot of peo­ple, a lot of that is pro­vid­ing jobs in or­der to keep them off the streets.

“We have a very low labour mar­ket ab­sorp­tion rate. Trinidad has a very low labour mar­ket par­tic­i­pa­tion rate. I think ours is prob­a­bly some­where in the mid-50s, where­as most of the oth­er is­lands it is 60-some­thing or 70-some­thing. We have a lot of peo­ple here who don’t of­fer them­selves for work,” Gon­za­les said.

As of March 2019, ac­cord­ing to for­mer plan­ning min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is in Par­lia­ment, there were 6,505 per­ma­nent po­si­tion va­can­cies and 6,517 con­tract po­si­tion va­can­cies.

How­ev­er, dur­ing one of her first speech­es as the new Prime Min­is­ter in Au­gust, PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there were around 20,000 va­can­cies.

Da­ta on labour force age trends

* Ac­cord­ing to Labour Min­istry da­ta, the per­cent­age of work­ers in the cat­e­gories 15 to 19 years old (-1%), 20 to 24 years old (-3.4%), and 25 to 29 years old (-3.1%) all de­creased over the last 13 years.

* Mean­while, the da­ta re­vealed that the per­cent­age of work­ers in the cat­e­gories 65 years and over (+1%), 60 to 64 years old (+2.5%) in­creased over the last 13 years.

* The cat­e­go­ry 55 to 59 years old re­mained steady, de­creas­ing by 0.1%.

Praise for hike in NIS con­tri­bu­tions

Gon­za­les al­so praised the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to raise the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions and the re­tire­ment age.

He said that giv­en the coun­try has an age­ing work­force, it was nec­es­sary.

“You have few­er younger peo­ple work­ing who will con­tribute to the pen­sion scheme. So you ei­ther have to in­crease the age, or in­crease con­tri­bu­tions, or do both, or in­crease the younger pop­u­la­tion–more mi­grants, more Venezue­lans; that is one way.

“The Chi­nese have the same prob­lem. Most de­vel­oped coun­tries have the same prob­lem, and they try to tack­le it through tech­nol­o­gy. Like in Chi­na, for in­stance, they use a lot of ro­bot­ics and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. In restau­rants, for ex­am­ple, a lot of them use ro­bot­ics, and in fac­to­ries and so on,” Dr Gon­za­les said.

* Dur­ing his 2026 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo an­nounced a phased six per cent in­crease in Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions: three per cent in Jan­u­ary 2026, and an­oth­er three per cent in Jan­u­ary 2027.

* The pre­vi­ous in­crease came in 2016, mov­ing from 12 per cent to 13.2 per cent of the em­ploy­ee’s month­ly salary.

* A June 2020 Ac­tu­ar­i­al Re­view by NIS pre­dict­ed that the fund would col­lapse by fis­cal 2034 with­out sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­ven­tion.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed wor­ry about the fund’s fu­ture.

In 2021, dur­ing a we­bi­nar chaired by CAF De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca, he said, “While I am hap­py that bar­ring un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances, we can look for­ward to many more years in our lives, I am al­so ful­ly aware of the ef­fects that a longer ex­pect­ed life will have on the re­tire­ment sys­tem of a coun­try and the im­pli­ca­tions of longevi­ty risk,” Im­bert said.

“The NIB has thus pro­ject­ed that by 2066 the 60-plus pop­u­la­tion in T&T will be al­most dou­ble its cur­rent size, while the group we re­ly on to sus­tain the fund–the 16-year-to-59-year age group–will de­crease by at least 25 per cent.”

Im­bert had said the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to car­ry out na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tions on the is­sue, but it nev­er took place.

Ahead of the 2026 Bud­get, ac­tu­ar­ies Derek Os­borne and Stoke­ley Smart warned that with­out bold, in­te­grat­ed re­forms, the NIS would strug­gle to meet its oblig­a­tions.