Public Administration Minister Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan says the Government is not interfering in the recruitment and selection of individuals for permanent (established and pensionable) positions in the public service, which, according to the law, has been, still is, and will always remain, the remit of the Public Service Commission (PSC).
The minister was responding to comments by Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley on Monday that “Government is trespassing on the authority of the Public Service Commission” over a Cabinet note dated September 4.
In a statement late yesterday the minister said contrary to Rowley’s claims, Government was not breaking the law, and continued to uphold and respect the remit of the Public Service Commission for the recruitment, selection and appointment of personnel to established, pensionable positions in the public service.
Seepersad-Bachan explained that the Cabinet note in question dealt with the introduction of a clerical, secretarial and office support relief programme and not on filling established positions in the public service. The minister said what was taking place was the modernising of the public service.
Modernising the public service, she said, would require re-engineering and those posts which were no longer relevant would need to be phased out while new posts would be created to reflect the realities and demands of the 21st-century citizen-centric public service workplace. “The creation of modern jobs is producing new openings for people to enter the public service.
“All these new jobs have gone to the personnel department for the determination of their salary ranges (classification) and these jobs will become pensionable as soon as this exercise is completed,” the minister said. She added: “This means hundreds of new, permanent jobs in the service will become available across all government ministries. At present, many of these new jobs are available only via contract.
“Our intention is to have these contract positions replaced by pensionable, established positions. The contract positions are ‘untenable,’ and that is why we are working assiduously to create new, professional, pensionable positions in the service.”