Let top Public Servants face public

The idea was sound Constitution too because the top public servants frame policy, give advice and implement political decisions. Who suffers more from incompetence than the public? Who takes the blame more than the politicians?

Let us wade through the haze of the new past time of "appreciation parties" and lavish "retirement send offs" (on tax payers’ money) and get ten questions through to the powerful ladies clique hiding behind the politicians:

Why with all the mega budgets are all the services to the public so bad? The politicians have given you the money and the structures. Don’t you go on the ground and test the services yourself? Put yourself in the shoes of the ordinary person.

Why does the Public Service Reform go on and on and on without results? Are the consultants favoured? Who choose and monitors, the choosers Who decides whether senior Public Servants are incompetent or corrupt? Do the disciplinary mechanisms work? Or are they any for those at the top?

When a public servant is grossly incompetent and is identifiable — like the one who framed the national gender policy — why isn’t she made to resign or retire?

What are the significant contributions in the last five years by the two top most public servants — the Head of the Public Service and the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Public Administration? Not one. Contributed to the brain drain? Doesn’t the Head of the Public Service prepare efficiency reports and insist on efficiency reports from each Ministry at least once yearly. Don’t the top public servants meet yearly or bi-yearly to survey and remedy the mess they have created?

Aren’t the top public servants — the Accountant General, the Auditor General, the Permanent Secretary Public Administration, the Head of the Public Service especially — aware of the colossal waste of money that goes on daily in government agencies? To the Director of Public Administration (Acting): Is it possible for a small clique to mislead the appointing body into making appointments that clique wants? Is this not destroying the fabric of independence of the Service Commissions?

My personal fear is that if they perform so badly when things are good what will happen if things suddenly go bad.

LYNDEN NOREIGA

Arima