Rowley proposes end to service commissions

NEXT YEAR, the Prime Minister will bring to Parliament, legislation that will end the lives of service commissions and replace them with a single tribunal that will hear the complaints of public servants.

Speaking to supporters at a PNM sports and family day at the Toco Secondary School, on Sunday, Dr Rowley said all public services were underperforming. And while some were calling for constitutional reform, he wanted to reform the system to address many of the gaps in the public service.

Rowley public services were failing because of a lack of proper management arrangements.

“These so-called independent service commissions that are hamstringing this country, there are certain things that will never change, that will never improve, as long as basic management tenets are not being met.”

He added: “What we want in the 21st century is to abolish all those service commissions and replace them with one tribunal. Because the purpose behind a service commission in 1962 was to protect people from arbitrary action of the incoming new government in the new country of TT, and (for) some people who were afraid that there would have been racial discrimination and this and that and the other.”

The functions of service commissions are to appoint, promote, transfer and discipline workers in the public service. There are four service commissions under the purview of the Service Commission Department.

They are: the Judicial and Legal Service Commission (JLSC), responsible for the appointment of judges and magistrates and the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions; the Police Service Commission (PSC), responsible for selecting the police commissioner and three deputies; the Teaching Service Commission, responsible for teachers in the public and denominational schools; and the Public Service Commission, responsible for all other public servants.

Rowley said service commissions were inimical to good order, anf four had outlived their usefulness.

“You tell me you have thousands of teachers now, over 400 schools, but you have a part-time service permission once in a while. So you want to appoint a teacher, it takes four years. Somebody misbehaves, discipline is nine years. And the same thing with the Police Service Commission, and the same thing with the JLSC. And we are the only country in the Commonwealth with that nonsense.”

He said, after 60 years of independence, TT could say it saw that method worked, but it was now time to change it.

“So if the political pundits and all the supporters and columnists, if they really want change in this country, let us, by public acclamation, across the nation, make the change of abolishing service commissio's in total.

"Put modern management systems in place. Put a tribunal in place for the public-service arrangements.

"And any public officer, whether it is a prison officer or policeman or teacher, if you have a problem with the management, you go to the tribunal and the tribunal will protect you. And that will give us a giant step and that is reform of the Constitution.”

Pessimistically, Rowley said the idea would not be supported by the Opposition, which he said would begin its opposition as early as Sunday night after his announcement was made known.

He said the UNC would oppose it becauseit did not support anything good for the country.

Rowley ended his nearly-60-minute off-the-cuff speech by telling his supporters  Tuesday would be the beginning of the party's internal nominations for local government elections.