PM Briceño on Caliber of Public Servants in Government Ministries

As we said, over fifty percent of the government’s revenue is being spent on public sector wages and pension. With the annual pension bill now exceeding one hundred million dollars, Prime Minister John Briceño says the need for pension reform is urgent. He further noted that the public sector begins to focus its efforts on hiring more employees that are better able to perform their duties.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“The problem we are having with governments, and successive governments and we throw the need to everybody that is to be blamed, for too long we do not have a public service that you set standards and if you meet the standards you could get into public service. For example in other countries, the elected representatives or the politicians can’t just go and say oh just hire this person. They have to meet certain standards. We have not done that so that government when you look at the workers, the employees the government has it is like a pear, small at the top and the bottom bog and a lot of times, no offense to anybody, a lot of times the people that come into the government system have limited ability to do the work. So now, when we try, we have to bring in somebody from outside the public service and those people will say well I nuh wah come work for government salary and the public service union start to cry foul. That is the challenge, we need more people that can help us to get the work done and I mean it as no disrespect to anybody, please.”