REMARKS BY THE HON.

FRED MITCHELL MP

MINISTER FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE

 

WYNDHAM NASSAU RESORT AND CRYSTAL PALACE

 

8TH October 2004

 

PUBLIC SECTOR REFORM SEMINAR

 

            Mr. Prime Minister and delegates to this public service seminar, I want to welcome you here this morning on behalf of the Ministry of the Public Service to this day long seminar on the future of the public service.  I am particularly happy that the Prime Minister has taken time from his busy schedule to place his imprimatur on this event.  Today, we are looking at the future of the public service.  All the experts tell us that it is the commitment from the very top that signals that the organization is serious about change.  The Prime Minister’s presence here this morning then is very important to the processes in which we are engaged.

            The reform of the public sector is perhaps the most important legacy that this Government will leave to the Bahamian people who are simply not satisfied about where we are in terms of the delivery of goods and services from the public sector.  The external clients are unhappy.  The workers within the system have a range of issues that seem to them intractable.  Today is part of the continuing journey of identifying and dealing with those issues. 

            We must all remember that reform is not like an apple on the shelf that you buy from Supervalu. You buy it, consume it and then it is gone.  This is a continuous process.  One that never stops.  Change is constant.  But this generation of leaders must do their part to continue the process.

            I am pleased to welcome all of the public sector unions and staff associations to this seminar, and I thank them for their ready agreement to participate, especially those who have come in from the Family Islands. In the process, I hope also that this exercise reinforces in the minds of the public and the workers in the sector, the Government's commitment to the workers and to the best service possible for the public and to openness and transparency in the public service. 

            I will tell you two stories.  Sir Arthur Foulkes who is now a columnist for The Tribune and is a former Minister, Member of Parliament and Ambassador, took issue with me some time ago when I repeated the experience of my first day in office as a Minister.  I came to office following two decades as a civic activist and an opposition politician.  In that march, I had gathered around me a cadre of people that I knew and knew me, and understood how to organize around my behavior, and could execute what I wanted to do.   I realized that things had fundamentally changed, when a man who had been with me for all of those years was told at the desk downstairs of the Foreign Affairs Ministry that he was not allowed to come up to see me unless he had permission to do so.   This may seem simple but I stood in the office and realized throughout the course of the day, that on the day that I took office, I was stripped of my political aides and associates, people who had been with me all my political life and left to deal with a body of people that I did not know, did not know me, and who no doubt had views one ay or the other about me.   And he difficulty was that the system as it then stood had provided no institutional means to resolve the issue.

            Sir Arthur thought that this was not a fair complaint.  He said that I should simply get to know the people that I had to work with.  That of course missed the point of the story.  It is not about my social work relationships and the ability to get along.  It is about the fact that Ministers have a short time to get their political agenda accomplished, the one for which they were elected and for which the constitution also provides a remit.  The organizational structure that we now have seems to have a predisposed and institutional resistance to the new person coming in from the outside and to that agenda. It is for that reason that many argue that there needs to be a reform to allow the Minister to bring with him the cadre of operatives that can help him quickly execute his job and interface properly with the public service.  In Britain, there have been significant reforms in this area.

            The second story has to do with when I was a student in the United Kingdom at the University of London in 1972.  I was taught a course on the British political system by Merlin Rees, then the Opposition Shadow Spokesman on Home Affairs, later the Home Secretary in the Labour Government.  Mr. Rees told me that in Britain, the civil servants of each Ministry always studied the platform and views of the Opposition party.  They briefed shadow ministers on events transpiring in the Ministry.  The idea was that the Opposition would one day be the Government and should be able to come in to Government not totally in the dark about the issues they would have to face when they took office.  This as you know is key in our system that has no transition period like that of the American system between changes in administrations.   This is clearly something to be recommended.

            My stories are a view from the top, however.  What I also know is that the view from the bottom is equally as complex and compelling.  Fully ninety per cent of my time as the public service minister is spent with what are seemingly intractable complaints about personnel matters that the system seems unable to resolve.  This is complicated by the fact that the institutions of the service themselves do not seem well suited to the modern era and are not well understood by those who work within, and by a lack of job mobility in the society that causes people generally to want to hold on the Government jobs or dear life, even when they are clearly ill-suited to and dissatisfied with the tasks which they are asked to perform.

            The first step to change is the recognition of the issues that we face.  Talk helps to acclimatize the atmosphere for change.  But we must all recognize that to change new must change, not talk about change, then choke when changes have to come.  

            That is why I felt compelled to convene this seminar today, to help to shape the process of change, to keep it on the radarscope, lest we do a disservice to the next generation of leaders in the public sector. Prime Minister the leaders gathered here are amongst the foremost advocates for change in the sector. Their engagement as trade unionists has risen far above the pure bread and butter issues but in the wider issues of sector reform, the regularly scheduled briefings on the economy at the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance, as well as regular discussions with me as the Minster about where we ought to be going.  I think that there is a commitment to change.

            The private sector must join us in this struggle and this commitment.  The Opposition party should also join us in this struggle.  This is not a political issue.  It is a common need, the success of which can only benefit The Bahamas.

            I thank the Permanent Secretary Irene Stubbs, Antonella Thompson of the Ministry of eh Public Service who did the organizational work, and Roosevelt Finlayson for being the facilitator for this event.  I look forward to the discussions.

            It is now my honour and privilege to call upon my friend and brother the Prime Minister to address us.  Mr. Prime Minister.

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