St. Lucia Minister plans to cut the public service staff
Mr. Victor Poyotte is a retired public officer with twenty-six years of public service experience, a decade of regional project management work with the CIDA funded OECS Eastern Caribbean Economic Management Programme (ECEMP), and the British funded Caribbean Overseas Territories Government Accounting Reform (COTGAR) Project, both of which were implemented by the firm CRC Sogema of Montreal Canada.
Recent statements by the minister of economic development, Guy Joseph, to the effect that: 'If it is one thing that COVID-19 has proved, is that the public service can operate with a lot less staff and still be efficient and productive as when there is a full complement.' Oh no minister, if you had to wait for COVID-19 to discover that the public service is overstaffed then you do not understand the public service.
Tell us the government will have no choice but to follow the prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund ( IMF ) to access the US$29.2 million loan facility. Your statements about hard-working public officers are both disingenuous and insulting. Further to that, COVID-19 has exposed you as the bankrupt government of the Caribbean.
For this discussion, I will focus on four standard criteria used to assess the performance of the public sector to demonstrate that the fault most of the time belongs to the transient political directorate. The performance assessment criteria are as follows:
Effectiveness: meaning choosing the right set of public policies to pursue the first time;
Efficiency: meaning efforts made to carry out assigned tasks right the first time;
Responsiveness: meaning giving prompt attention to the needs of citizens;
Economy: meaning the frugal management of scarce public financial resources.
Do not treat the statements made by economic minister Joseph lightly. He is on a mission to cut the public service to satisfy the conditions of the US$29.2 million loan secured by the government from the IMF. All public sector unions need to be vigilant to stop the government from putting a large number of Saint Lucians on the bread-line
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