Dear Prime Minister Stuart,
I know your administration means well for Barbados and has been trying its best to ensure the quality of life of each Barbadian can be maintained at the acceptable high level he/she has become accustomed even in the face of a worsening economic situation.
The policies your administration has pursued, especially with regard to employment in the Public Service, targeted this objective.
That this country’s economic fortunes have consistently worsened and, consequently, the average Barbadian’s, despite these best efforts should tell you that good intentions by themselves are not enough to guarantee success.
This note, sir, is therefore intended to alert you that another brewing situation unleashed by your administration – unwittingly, I hope – is causing great suffering to humble Barbadians you have sworn to help.
I speak of the hundreds of temporary workers in the Public Service who have been finding that they no longer have a job, even though some have been temporary for years.
Of course, you can say that you addressed this last Friday when you declared that these workers have not been sacked and irregularities are due to how Government’s accounting computerized system, SmartStream, works.
You were quoted by the Government Information Service as saying: “Because of the way SmartStream functions, and it happens at the Welfare Department from time to time, at a certain time people are just cut off the system and have to be put back on . . . .
“Therefore, there were a number of names that dropped out of the system . . . a lot connected to statutory entities, not central Government . . . . It is not my understanding that this [situation] has meant that any number of people have been sent home; it is that they have dropped out of the system.”
Though your statement is largely true, Mr Prime Minister, is it not some of the story? Should you not have explained, particularly to those anxious workers and their dependants, what could really be happening?
That is, names only “drop out” of SmartStream when the authorization period a person was employed for ends and no new authorization has been given for that stint to continue.
Don’t you think, Mr Prime Minister, that you should have also explained that when the period for which an individual acts in a senior post has come to an end of its authorized period in SmartStream, a domino effect can strike others who were assigned to act in higher posts to ensure the particular department has its complement of staff?
For example, if someone was assigned to act as a permanent secretary then there could be as many as seven others behind him/her who would move up to act in the posts above the job they are appointed to.
If that acting permanent secretary’s authorization to be in that job ended in July, and no new authorization was given for it to continue, then SmartStream would automatically not pay that individual the acting salary in August.
What’s more, each of the seven people who were assigned to posts as a consequence of that individual’s acting assignment would also revert to being paid at the rate for their substantive job. And in the case of temporary people brought on at the bottom, they would not be paid at all because they would not have been on the payroll in the first place.
Mr Prime Minister, isn’t this the real reason behind what happened at the General Post Office this week when nearly 40 workers realized their pay was cut, and in the case of temporary workers, not received at all? Isn’t this why Postmaster General Joel Brathwaite could truthfully admit that he was not aware of the situation?
Sir, this is why I wrote this letter to you today. As Prime Minister, you must always be seen to be aware of all the facts concerning a matter, or the public may get the impression that you are not being forthright.
And it is easy for such false notions to be harboured given your administration’s “total freeze on all new hiring in the central Public Service and across all statutory entities”, which also extends “to the hiring of substitutes, temporary and/or casual workers as replacements for appointed staff proceeding on leave” as announced by your Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler in this year’s Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposals.
Sinckler also declared the only deviation from this policy would have to be approved by you as Minister of Civil Service.
So, sir, since it all comes back to you, I would urge you to state clearly what the real situation is regarding the future of temporary workers in the Public Service and not blame SmartStream. Apart from technical glitches, it only does what humans authorize it to do.
• Sanka Price is a NATION editor.
