There are 9,000 vacancies in T&T’s public service which is staffed by 27,000 to 30,000 public servants—including 13,800 contract officers.
The figures were confirmed yesterday by Public Service Commission chairman Maureen Manchouck and Public Administration’s permanent secretary Joan Mendez when PSC and affiliated officers appeared before a Parliamentary committee which examined efficiencies in the system.
Manchouck said the PSC was not responsible for managing or running the service, or doing budgeting or staff hiring or training. She said PSC is an oversight body handling policy, reports and monitoring.
Manchouck said the public service’s size is between 27,000 to 30,000 divided among 23 government ministries. There were 33 ministries under the previous People’s Partnership administration.
Mendez said there are 13,800 contract officers.
Prabhwatie Maraj, deputy Director of Personnel Administration, said there are approximately 9,000 job vacancies in the service - 4,636 specific vacancies and about 4,551 generic ones.
Mendez said a review of ministries will be done after their strategic plans are completed.
“We feel there are some areas of over-staffing and other areas which are under-staffed. Rationalisation needs to be done,” Mendez said.
She said a preliminary exercise was done due to the realignment from the PP’s 33 ministries to the PNM’s 23, and further restructuring was needed. As Ministry planning is complete, more realignments can be done. She said Ministries seek to retain posts every few weeks.
PSC member Clive Pegus said in 2016, there were 10,000 realignments.
Director of Personnel Administration Anastasius Creed said the realignment of Ministries did not decrease the size of the service or vacancies since some posts shifted.
Committee member Ramona Ramdial asked if regulations allowed permanent secretaries who reached retirement age — like Energy’s Selwyn Lashley—to be reappointed.
PSC legal adviser Natasha Seebaran said this is not within regulation. Pegus said regulation 15 (1) allowed for employment of a pensioner with the Prime Minister’s approval, if the person had necessary special experience, is particularly useful to the division, and if it was not possible to fill the post.
Manchouck said such appointments are only made in exceptional circumstances. She said this particular one—Lashley’s—was considered carefully and it was decided it was justified.
Pegus added that a strong case was made to the PSC by the permanent secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister. He said the Energy Ministry’s deputy PS had lacked the requisite experience for the post. He said the appointment was for a year and the PSC strongly recommended to the OPM’s Permanent Secretary that succession planning be done.
Manchouck said the new batch of deputy PSs due for appointment may be given training specific for ministries.
Deal with complaints in-house
Complaints about public service officers should be dealt with at the level of Ministries and Human Resource divisions, says Sandra Jones, Permanent Secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister.
“We’ve been speaking to PSs and many of them are working to comply on these issues,” she said.
Jones spoke after committee member Khadijah Ameen said the PSC was perceived as not being receptive to complaints from the public about public service officers.
Director of Personnel Administration Anastasius Creed said complaints sent to PSC are acknowledged and researched. The latter sometimes takes much time since the PSC has a paper-based system—with thousands of files—and is now beginning to be computerised. Creed said there were 240 representations last year.
