Go beyond dollar signs of advisers

On to consultants: This newspaper has again mischievously sought, in a Sunday front-pager and follow-up editorial, to set the public against the Government for spending tiny 'big bucks' for services rendered to it, this time by consultants and assistants. The amount which is about to derail an "austerity Budget" is all of J$100 million spent in eight of 16 ministries. Scaled up equally to all 16 ministries, we're talking about J$200 million, or three-hundredth of one per cent (0.03%) of that J$612-billion 'austerity Budget'. According to the Page 1 article, in an unfair set-on, "The Sunday Gleaner has confirmed that even as [Finance Minister] Phillips was tacking on tax to certain basic food items to raise revenue, at least eight members of the ... Cabinet were busy adding millions annually to the government wage bill" as "wages to some 40 consultants and executive/personal assistants".

Wow! This is really big news! An adviser to the minister of education is pocketing all of J$5 million!

Government needs technical support to get its work done. This support may be through the appointment of permanent full-time civil servants or hiring consultants and assistants on term. And it simply is not true that the second route is automatically more expensive than the first; it certainly is likely to give better value for money in terms of competence, quality and performance. The consultant comes without many of the maintenance overheads of the permanent staffer. The gratuity which gripes The Sunday Gleaner may be cheaper than the pension. The hires can be easily terminated and a different set of skills hired as needed.

Indeed, in financially difficult times, as The Gleaner very well understands, private enterprise routinely goes the route of outsourcing work to highly focused temps on projectised tasks rather than adding to permanent staff.

The Opposition hypocritically swallowed The Gleaner story, bait, hook, line and sinker, opportunistically overlooking that recently in Government, it had paid more money to more consultants.

What the newspaper should probe is any indication of cronyism, value for money, and duplication with mainstream civil-service functions which amounts to paying twice for the same service. The raw figures of the tiny 'big bucks', wrapped in dramatics, do little to shed light on the matter of hiring consultants and assistants, something which all governments must do. But culling data from documents obtained through the Access to Information Act is a lot easier than pounding the pavement to investigate beyond the given numbers.