NEED TO CLEAR AIR

The issue of whether or not Chairman of the Public Service Commission, Kenneth Lalla, gave permission for Prime Minister Patrick Manning to personally handover to Commissioner of Police, Everald Snaggs, his letter of appointment has been in the public domain for far too long and, given the positions of the principals, needs to be cleared up quickly. Lalla said he gave no permission for Mr Manning to hand over the letter. On the other hand the Head of the Public Service, Zaida Rajnauth, insisted she had requested of the Director of Personnel Administration (DPA), Mikey Mahabir, that the letter be passed on to her as the Prime Minister wished to hand it over to Snaggs. “I did indicate to Mr Mahabir the reason I was asking for the letter to be sent to me, and I was advised that the approval of the Chairman of the PSC was obtained prior to the letter being sent to me,” Rajnauth emphasised, adding that “...it was in those circumstances that I gave the letter to the Prime Minister.”

Both the PSC Chairman and the Head of the country’s Public Service cannot both be right at the same time. Lalla has stressed that the procedure for 15 years has been that such a letter would have been signed by the DPA and forwarded to the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of National Security, who “as a public officer” delivers the letter. Lalla’s position is that he did not follow the 15-year procedure because the DPA indicated to him that Rajnauth, who is Head of the Public Service, had requested it be sent to her, and he had deferred because she held “superior status” to the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of National Security. Why did the PSC Chairman not ask the DPA to find out of Rajnauth why she had requested what should have been a thought provoking departure, at least to a public service officer as senior as the DPA, from what had become established procedure over a period of 15 years? Public servants, whether senior, middle management or junior, are by training and exposure given to taking defensive, if not cautious positions.

Why then did the Director of Personnel Administration not write to the PSC Chairman that he had been requested by the Head of the Public Service to send Snaggs’ letter of appointment to her, and provide Lalla with the reason Rajnauth pointed out she communicated to the DPA? In turn, given the statement made by Rajnauth, it does not appear that the DPA in forwarding Snaggs’ letter of appointment to the Public Service Head also sent an accompanying letter explaining that it had been done in response to her request, and the reason advanced for that request. That is that Prime Minister Manning desired to hand Snaggs’ letter of appointment to him personally. What appears on hindsight to have been a proverbial storm in a teacup can be readily cleared up by DPA Mahabir. The principals involved, are all exemplars, and the matter can be cleared up very easily once and for all. The bottom line is that there is a difference between Lalla “knowing” that the Prime Minister’s  office wanted the letter sent to them and Lalla giving his “approval” which he said he did not.