21st October 2008
House of Assembly
Nassau, The Bahamas

Since my last briefing on 17th September, there have been a number of developments in the public service that bear comment.

The Prime Minister has on two occasions as the Minister responsible for the public service, made comments about the performance of the public service.  The comments were unflattering and reflect the dissatisfaction that is often expressed by both public servants and the general public about the public service.

In my initial response as the former Minister and as the now Opposition spokesman on the Public Service, I told The Tribune that it should not lie in the mouth of the Prime Minister who is now in a position to fix things to simply wring his hands and describe the problem in terms that denigrate civil servants.

Indeed, the problem is much deeper than simply denouncing a form of behaviour.  The problem in our country about service is systemic and endemic.  The situation is just as bad in the private sector.  The problems need to be addressed from the cradle to the grave, and must start in our education system if we are to conquer this significant problem.

When I was last here, I described the political purge that is going in the public service and where public servants who are suspected of being PLP are being pushed out or relegated to positions where they have nothing to do.  The Minister of State with day-to-day authority for the public service described this as delusional.  Of course, it is he who is deluded if he thinks that the public and the public service cannot see the pattern of conduct by the FNM of seeking to eliminate and destroy the PLP’s influence in the public service. Such a plot will fail.

Within minutes of my intervention on the radio on this matter, I received a call from a senior public servant and from a number of police officers who confirmed the comment and said that more must be done to speak out on the point.

The Prime Minister has announced six pilots to attempt to reform various services provided by the government.  This is to be done in conjunction with CARICAD, the Caricom body responsible for advice on public sector reform.  This continues what the PLP started with regard to public sector reform. The six departments identified are: The Department of the Public Service, the Registrar General’s Department, the Road Traffic Department, the Building Control Division, the Passport Office and the Physical Planning department.

I think that the Consular Section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ought to have been added as indeed the whole Ministry should have been added.  The Ministry is a prime example of a government agency that does not respond to and is insensitive to its external environment and to its need to serve and inform its clientele. Indeed as the Opposition spokesman on Foreign Affairs, I have received complaints from citizens who are unable to access the services of the Ministry on non-workdays or after hours. In one case, the telephones in the embassy in China rang without answer, and when the highest officials were contacted here, none of them had a number by which to contact the Ambassador after hours.

Further, the Prime Minister has not demonstrated that this project will have any more success than our projects because there is not a sufficient buy in from the Permanent Secretaries who run government ministries.  What is typical is that we all like to talk the language of reform but when it comes to reform and change, we do not want to change.

The President of the Bahamas Public Services Union John Pinder made the point in this morning’s press that unless there is an acceptance that change must come from Permanent Secretaries on down, without their buy in, then there will be no change and any proposed changes are a doomed to failure.

There is no evidence that the leaders and the managers of the service want to change.

In our time, we had the additional problem where there was a fight within the government as to who was to lead the public sector reform effort between the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry the Public Service, and never the twain met.  The result was the reform successes were less than stellar.
 
It is a matter of some regret that the Government does not also seek to get a buy in on this subject from those of us in the Progressive Liberal Party.

I wish to congratulate all those who were honoured this year at Public Service Week.  I want to thank all the retirees for their work with the service.

Minister of Tourisms Comments
I was shocked at the comments attributed to the Minister of Tourism who had just been involved in a public appeal for the help of all Bahamians to make his new plans for tourism work. Those comments appeared in the Bahama Journal this morning.  He attacked the Leader of the Opposition who indicated that the plans that the Minister now has for tourism are not new since they were on the drawing board when the PLP was in office. Instead of welcoming Mr. Christie’s valuable input, the Minister reportedly said:  “A vision without execution is simply a hallucination”.  While there is the temptation not to resist being clever, it should be resisted, if the net result is going to be that there will not be bipartisan support for the efforts to ensure that tourism succeeds.  Indeed, our spokesman on tourism had already welcomed the new initiatives.  It is curious how the Minister expects his programme to succeed if there is going to be a partisan attack by the Minister.

He needs to have the support of all, and from some reports coming out of his Ministry, he will need a sufficient buy in from the employees of the Ministry who though not civil servants in the strictest sense are servants of the public and some of them are quite skeptical about the plans that are being advanced.  In fact, I understand that the slogan ITS BETTER IN THE BAHAMAS is to be revived. That is a slogan from the 1970s.  So the old becomes the new.

I would urge the Minister to seek to get the buy in from his public servants or his programme may not be successful.

In addition, the Minister needs to say what the position is with regard to visas for Chinese nationals and those Indians who want to travel here since there is now to be an outreach in those areas.

THE EPA
The Economic Partnership Agreement was signed on 15th October 2008.  I expect to make a detailed statement about his tomorrow at a Rotary meeting and make only the point that it has been signed at this juncture.