And Usher's first reason raised concerns about the ever-growing wage bill. So how does GOB plan to resolve this without retrenchment? Well, the PM told us their plan:
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"We've said that from a long time ago and I think that is why I'm feeling that once we can, with this project, it will help us to do better. As people are retiring, you may not necessarily have to bring in people back, and that's how we would be able to control it without retrenching. But the truth of the matter is that the public service right now is like a pear-you have a small top and the bottom is big. And so the challenge we have that almost every ministry today, they need more people, they need more technical people, and the people at the bottom don't have the technical expertise. And that is the challenge, so we need to put something in place whereby we could move these things from the politicians to just hire, 'Oh, this is my friend or my voter, give them a job.' We're under tremendous pressure, and yes, we do hire when they come if there's need, but we're under tremendous pressure from people who say, 'You did not go in there and fire the UDP as the UDP did in 2008.' You know what the then Prime Minister said? 'To the winner, the spoils.' That's what he said in the National Assembly. We could have taken the COVID pandemic as an excuse to let go a lot of people. We were told by the IMF to get rid of about 3,000, but we didn't, because I don't think it's fair to take advantage of people who are barely eking out a living. You want to deal, deal with the big guys, but not the people out there. So we feel different, but despite all of that, we're under pressure from our people, so we need to find a system where we could minimize that kind of thing and try to bring back that independence that the public service had before independence and maybe the first years after independence, where it was a completely independent service that can really truly provide the service that is expected from them."
