‘Systemic failure’

Opposition Leader Bishop Joe Atherley termed the long wait for appointments within the public service as a “systemic failure”.

Speaking during Parliament’s sitting on Tuesday, he said it was “fundamentally wrong” that many public servants could not say what their legal status was due to being forced to wait several years for appointment.

In the debate on the Public Service (General) Order, 2020 and the Public Service Teachers (Amendment) Order 2020, he also knocked the Attorney General for suggesting moments earlier ‘the pot should not call the kettle black’ regarding the previous Democratic Labour Party’s hiring of individuals without appointing them.

“It is not about the pot so much so much or the kettle. It is about the water in those instruments that is feeling the pressure and the heat – the people! I am not in anyway being controversial. I am not even seeking to be scathing in my submission with reference to the current administration. I am saying that there are systemic failures and part of the reason why these exist over the years across administrations is because we lose sight of the people from the mix. There are people here with lives and with futures and we have got to take them into consideration. You cannot play with people’s lives.”

“We cannot reduce this matter in the context of its persistence to be one of administrative consider-ations. We cannot simply say that some technocrat in the public service got it wrong and did not do what they were supposed to do and there was an oversight. There is a Minister in the Civil Service, there is a Minister responsible for the public service, there is a Minister of Labour, you cannot just pass it off as an oversight or deficiency in the efforts and approaches of the public service machinery that is responsible for civil administration,” he stressed. (JMB)