EDITORIAL - PAAC strikes a note for growth and jobs

Parliament's Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC), chaired by Opposition House member, Dr Wykeham McNeill, has been holding hearings on the Government's green paper on the transformation of the public sector with, unfortunately, insufficient public attention.

That, we hope, will change.

Indeed, the submissions by those called to testify, and discussions around them, have not only been pertinent, but mostly of high quality - none so more than those delivered on Wednesday. In a way, these latest interventions could serve to recalibrate the conversation about the proposed public-sector reform, thereby generating wider social buy-in and, ultimately, help to create an environment-sustainable economic advancement in Jamaica.

Clearly, Jamaica, in its current circumstances, cannot continue to afford a public-sector wage bill of more than $127 billion and climbing, representing nearly 13 per cent of gross domestic product. In that regard, it is understandable that some job cuts in the public sector are inevitable.

Economic growth

Nonetheless, the focus of the conversation has been too much on this aspect of the problem - and this newspaper is willing to accept part of the blame for this - rather than how to position the public bureaucracy as a support partner to that critical engine of economic growth, the private sector.

That is the important shift we discerned in the committee's work on Wednesday, starting with the opening remarks by its chairman, Dr McNeill. He feels that with more than 60 per cent of government expenditure going to health, education and national security, there is little room to manoeuvre with government spending.

Therefore, Dr McNeill said, there has to be attention to the role the public service plays "in providing an enabling environment for the promotion of growth and employment by the private sector".

So, transformation has to get to the nitty-gritty stuff like how permits are granted, what are really needed and what should be abolished, and how are those agencies and public-sector workers who are on the front line to be empowered to get the job done.

These, frankly, are the kind of common-sense initiatives which we understand to be at the heart of public-sector reform and which must be tackled.

Practical and sensible

As we noted, it was not only that Dr McNeill was practical and sensible on Wednesday. There was also an important intervention by Dr Carlton Davis, the retired Cabinet secretary and former head of the civil service.

He placed firmly on the agenda the need to reform pension and leave entitlement in the civil service. Civil servants enjoy non-contributory pensions, the bill for which, 15 years ago, was around $2 billion. It is now $15 billion in unfunded and unaffordable payments. And much higher than the allocation to most ministries.

Civil servants must begin to contribute to their pensions, which is one way to limit job cuts. Unions, if they are smart, will engage on this matter as well as leave entitlements that are far in excess of what obtains in the private sector.

If the intellectual weight brought by Mr Lloyd Goodleigh, the president of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions, is any signal, perhaps we can be optimistic. His call for robust reform of the labour market was as timely as it was logical.

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