Scrooges or just public servants?

THE GRINCH has, once again, stolen Christmas.

On Thursday, the Prime Minister cast doubt on his administration’s promise to 37,000 public sector workers that they would get $1 billion in back pay in time for the holidays. Instead, he suggested the earliest the money might come through is next May, a full five months later than initially promised.

It was a repeat of history.

In 2015, a previous government, the People’s Partnership administration, assured public servants they would get back pay well in time for the festive season, by September 30 at latest. It was not to be.

Kamla Persad-Bissessar was voted out of office. By the end of the year, Colm Imbert, the new finance minister, was promising to pay some workers in 2016 instead, saying the funds were simply not available for the extra payout.

Perhaps this is why Mr Imbert this month, in his budget, went all out to emphasise his desire to see back pay disbursed.

“I am requesting all permanent secretaries and accounting officers by way of this budget statement to immediately start preparing the paperwork to achieve this deadline for these payments,” he said.

It would appear this request has either fallen on deaf ears or was impossible to comply with.

For Dr Rowley, this latest episode of back-pay commess relates to a querulous and gratuitously defiant civil service. The Scrooge-like characters in this tale, for him, are people who are getting on bad and who seem to want to run the country in his stead.

But it is not just unnamed permanent secretaries who have provoked the PM’s ire in recent times.

On Thursday, he also aimed his guns at other public servants and public service entities in relation to two recent matters: the wastage of millions on an empty office building and the commotion involving the Registrar General’s office in Tobago. In these matters, he fingered the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Judicial and Legal Service Commission, and the civil servants in the Tobago matter.

On the latter, Dr Rowley has gone so far as to ask Attorney General Reginald Armour, SC, for guidance. He has even had at least one meeting with the public service.

The PM’s longstanding concerns about the service are well known. At one stage, he went as far as to suggest the abolition of all commissions in the country. If back pay is, indeed, not paid by December it may well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

There is need for caution and restraint. If the government is spurred into reform by the upending of its budget promise, such reform measures cannot be allowed to impact the independence of the public service and its commissions.