The chairman switched hats for a second to the Minister of Public Service. His ministry is in the process of reviewing the public service regulations with the possibility of amending it. He told the press today that the regulations need "tightening up" and that the ministry will be working closely with the union.
Hon. Henry Charles Usher- Minister of Public Service, Constitutional and Political Reform
"As you rightly said there are a lot of areas within the public service regulations that need a little tightening up a little improvement and we will be looking at all of those. The union has presented a lot of updates that they would like to see happening in the regulations so we would be working very closely with them in terms of how we move forward with the changes having to be made in the regulations but the regulations cover a number of issues it covers hiring, transfers, promotions, terminations, disciplinary measures if there need to be disciplinary measures. So there is a lot going on in those regulations; training. I am happy to say that we just had a graduation class for secretaries, the first one in a number of years. When they approached me back in November and said you know we would like to do it but we would have to do it virtually I said yes let's get it done. So we are having that graduation ceremony I believe on February 11th, it will be made public. But this is the type of work that needs to be done at the public service, needs to be done for public officers so that they can have that independence, they can have that confidence of knowing that they are coming to their job. They know that there is a promotion mechanism in place where people don't just come in and leapfrog them for whatever reason. It is important to bring back the independence the efficiency of the public service. It should not be a political measure where you are hiring, firing, transferring, or promoting anybody. It should be done according to the regulations. It should be done according to the regulations. It should be done according to what we see in working with the union as well."
