Mar­i­ano Browne

Pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly top­i­cal is­sues of­ten ex­pose a glar­ing weak­ness which was pre­vi­ous­ly over­looked. Last week’s an­nounce­ment by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to dis­con­tin­ue one of the sev­er­al cor­rup­tion cas­es which arose out of the con­struc­tion of the new air­port pro­vid­ed such an op­por­tu­ni­ty. In a fol­low-up ra­dio in­ter­view, the DPP not­ed that the de­part­ment was so per­ilous­ly un­der­staffed that it could lead to a col­lapse of the coun­try’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

The DPP has warned of be­ing short-staffed in the past and of the po­ten­tial con­se­quences. He not­ed that the de­part­ment had ap­prox­i­mate­ly 58 pros­e­cu­tors but need­ed 129, de­scrib­ing the prob­lem as “acute and chron­ic…any time you reach a stage where the num­ber of courts out­num­bers the num­ber of pros­e­cu­tors, that must be an area of con­cern.”

In Feb­ru­ary, he re­ferred to Cab­i­net Minute 1450, ap­proved on May 29, 2013, which pro­posed a new or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture for the DPP’s de­part­ment, adding 79 more at­tor­neys.

In ad­di­tion, pros­e­cu­tors have been pro­mot­ed to the bench whilst oth­ers have left for oth­er pre­sum­ably more lu­cra­tive po­si­tions. Re­cent­ly, the Chief Jus­tice, head of the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC) which is re­spon­si­ble for re­cruit­ing and pro­mot­ing le­gal staff and judges, com­ment­ed that DPP staff should be ful­ly de­ployed notwith­stand­ing the chal­lenges.

This must be an un­com­fort­able arrange­ment. The Chief Jus­tice has of­ten not­ed that the back­log of cas­es is un­man­age­able as the num­ber of cas­es will take many years to be con­clud­ed, even with­out the new ones be­ing added to the back­log. Yet, as Chair­man of the JLSC, the Chief Jus­tice ought to be able to ad­dress the re­source short­fall. Why should it take ten years to get the job done? What is the prob­lem? If the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty is over­staffed, as sug­gest­ed in some quar­ters, why are the ap­proved job po­si­tions still un­filled? Are there too few ap­pli­cants? If yes, why is that? Is the re­cruit­ment process too cum­ber­some or com­pli­cat­ed?

The fi­nance min­is­ter has in­di­cat­ed that the coun­try’s fi­nances have re­cov­ered al­low­ing this mat­ter to be treat­ed with ur­gency and sen­si­tiv­i­ty. Un­der­re­sourced and over­worked staff make for poor work­ing con­di­tions and de­mor­alised staff. This is the con­text in which the op­er­at­ing prac­tices have been char­ac­terised as per­son­nel ad­min­is­tra­tion rather than hu­man re­source man­age­ment and lead to sub­op­ti­mal out­comes.

In such an en­vi­ron­ment any short­fall in mar­ket com­pen­sa­tion fac­tors makes the re­cruit­ment process more dif­fi­cult. There must be ef­fi­cien­cy and com­pet­i­tive­ness in the com­pen­sa­tion pol­i­cy if one is to at­tract and re­tain tal­ent.

The 2017–2020 Green Pa­per on Trans­form­ing the Civ­il Ser­vice as­serts that it is dif­fi­cult to re­tain ex­pe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­al and man­age­r­i­al staff in the civ­il ser­vice. To over­come this chal­lenge, cer­tain tech­ni­cal po­si­tions (eg, en­gi­neers and IT) have been grant­ed ad hoc pro­fes­sion­al al­lowances. This has led to civ­il ser­vants ap­ply­ing for leave of ab­sence to take up oth­er high­er pay­ing jobs in oth­er ar­eas of the ser­vice when pos­si­ble. Al­so, con­tract of­fi­cers have been re­cruit­ed from out­side the pub­lic ser­vice on fixed-term con­tracts with pay lev­els out­side the ap­proved salary ranges/scales. Both mea­sures have con­tributed to in­equitable dis­tor­tions and feel­ings of in­jus­tice which helps to desta­bilise the work­ing en­vi­ron­ment. These dis­tor­tions have been ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the cu­mu­la­tive his­to­ry of low-pay set­tle­ments/union ne­go­ti­a­tions over the years.

The Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer’s (CPO) de­part­ment is re­spon­si­ble for ad­vis­ing and ne­go­ti­at­ing pay and terms and con­di­tions of ser­vice for the recog­nised bar­gain­ing units which con­sti­tute the var­i­ous branch­es of the pub­lic ser­vice. The de­part­ment is in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion. How­ev­er, as lead con­sul­tant and ne­go­tia­tor on be­half of the GORTT, the CPO’s of­fice is guid­ed by the fi­nance min­istry, to de­vel­op a holis­tic and af­ford­able ap­proach to the bar­gain­ing process. In prac­tice, the CPOs must in­cor­po­rate the pro­ject­ed im­pact of any ne­go­ti­a­tion po­si­tion on the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal op­er­a­tions. The em­pha­sis is on af­ford­able and sus­tain­able, as gov­ern­ment must ex­er­cise the re­spon­si­ble fis­cal dis­ci­pline nec­es­sary to keep the Gov­ern­ment’s fi­nances on an even keel. This in­for­ma­tion can on­ly come from the bud­get di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance which is re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the pub­lic fi­nances.

The last ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment cov­ered the pe­ri­od from Jan­u­ary 2011 to De­cem­ber 2013. There­fore, there have been no agreed wage set­tle­ments for the nine years from Jan­u­ary 2014 to De­cem­ber 2022. The CPO’s ne­go­ti­a­tion po­si­tion pub­lished fol­low­ing the 2022 mid-year bud­get re­view con­tained sev­er­al “ze­ros” mean­ing that no in­crease was con­tem­plat­ed for much of the pe­ri­od. This has hap­pened sev­er­al times be­fore, the cu­mu­la­tive ef­fect of which is to en­sure that civ­il ser­vice salaries are well be­low com­pet­i­tive mar­ket prices.

This has re­duced the at­trac­tive­ness of the pub­lic ser­vice as a ca­reer and lim­its the ca­pac­i­ty to re­cruit the best and the bright­est in­to the civ­il ser­vice. While salaries need not be ex­act­ly equal to pri­vate sec­tor wage rates, nei­ther should they be sub­stan­tial­ly low­er. The point is sim­ple. Civ­il ser­vice per­for­mance must be of a high stan­dard if the coun­try is to progress. To per­form at its best, the ser­vice must at­tract, re­tain and chal­lenge tal­ent. Cur­rent civ­il ser­vice salaries do not help achieve this re­sult.

The writer is the cur­rent Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of The UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness.