Concerns linger over executive agencies
Published:Sunday | January 30, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Damion Mitchell, News Editor Radio
Stakeholders attending The Gleaner's recent Editors' Forum have expressed reservations about a proposal by the Government to move towards transforming more public agencies into executive bodies.
The transformation of public agencies into executive bodies means that they would still be state-owned, but some would be removed from the national budget and instead be required to generate their own funds to operate. The Government has advanced the argument that they would also help to make the public sector more efficient.
"It is something that we welcome," said O'Neil Grant of the Jamaica Civil Service Association, expressing satisfaction about the human resource practices involved in the process. "What we find happening out of this transformation system that is happening now is a re-education of our human resource managers in the public service." He said as a result, the huge gaps were closing in respect of poor human resource practices.
But Dr Carolyn Gomes, the executive director of Jamaicans for Justice, believes that the transformation of more public bodies into executive agencies would only seek to perpetuate the issue of unaccountability that she believes is now rife among the existing institutions. "Privatised agencies answer to whom?" questioned Gomes. "It's a lot more difficult to hold them accountable." She referred to the Registrar General's Department, which is an executive body, as well as the Child Development Agency (CDA) as among those she says are of concern.
"The CDA did not even get a mention in the Ministry of Health's report to Parliament," Gomes bemoaned.
Has to be strategic
The president of the Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Alliance, Professor Rosalea Hamilton, believes any move to transform public-sector bodies, particularly in the education sector, has to be very strategic.
"We cannot set public-sector rules that are not only inappropriate for universities but are not mindful of the fact that if we can't compete, we will die. We have to marry some of the private-sector realities with the public-sector good," she insisted.
It is a position shared by Nadine Molloy-Young, the president of the 23,000-member Jamaica Teachers' Association. "This is why we have to develop policies that would monitor and guide (these agencies)," she said.
The move to reform the public sector is being spearheaded by the Transformation Unit operating out of the Cabinet Office. Last week, Daryl Vaz, the minister with responsibility for information, told a press briefing that the Cabinet was expected to get the final recommendations of the unit shortly. He said thereafter, the Government would move to make the "tough decisions".
In preparing its report, the team approached the task by looking at the existing ministries and then evaluated whether they thought the departments and agencies under them were necessary or efficient. Permanent secretaries were asked to review the functions of their specific ministries and decide on one of six options - retention, transfer, merger, abolition, divestment/privatisation and contracting out - that was best to implement.