At least, however, the Minister was prepared to be much more open about the propensity than some of her colleagues are prepared to be though, apart from making the typically ‘political’ statement that the government was committed to stamping out corruption in the public service Minister Westford was decidedly vague on details as to exactly how the administration intends to go about the cleaning of the Augean Stables.
It is no secret that corruption in the public service is driven largely by two factors. On the one hand there are lowly-paid public servants who are prepared to use the influence provided by their office to enrich themselves. On the other, there are people who place a sufficiently high value on receiving these services without having to go through the procedures attached to getting to pay for them and, in some cases, to pay handsomely.
The point to be made here – and it is a point that Minister Westford would do well to bear in mind – is that as long as there are public servants responsible for the delivery of services that are in demand and who continue to be paid peppercorn salaries – on the one hand – and, on the other, people who are prepared to pay for these services – corruption in the public service is likely to grow worse, however well-intended she might be.
Several weeks ago during an interview with this newspaper President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), Chandradat Chintamani spoke of the interconnected nature of corruption involving the public sector, on the one hand and the private sector on the other. Chintamani was referring to what he conceded was the well-entrenched practice of private businessmen whom, as it were, have some GRA employees ‘in their pockets.’ The point which we believe Chintamani was making is that where the private sector was prepared to pay ‘under the table’ to secure services of one kind or another from the GRA public servants employed with the GRA and with the various other agencies would be only too happy to oblige.
While the Minister did say that government “will continue to implement methods by which the employment benefits of public workers will be enhanced” she appeared to suggest in her presentation that what has now become annual five and six per cent handouts to public servants was still something to be grateful for in circumstances where other Caribbean countries had had to endure retrenchment, wage cuts and wage freezes without taking account of the fact that public sector salaries in Guyana still lag further behind inflation than in many other parts of the Caribbean. Depressingly low salary levels in the public sector is a circumstance of which Minister Westford is well aware and she is surely living in another world if she believes that the insultingly small annual handouts euphemistically described as salary increases are sufficient to stem the tide of corruption in the public service among those seeking to ‘make something on the side.’
Nor does the Minister’s attempt in parliament to suggest that things are honky dory between the administration and the Guyana Public Service Union appear in the least convincing in circumstances where the practice of negotiating wage and salary increases with the union has long been abandoned in favour of an arbitrary and, frankly, shamefully meagre handout.
Nor does the granting of more scholarships and other forms of exposure to higher levels of training have a great deal to do with stamping out corruption except such training is to be accompanied with higher levels of remuneration which, while not providing iron-clad assurances that corrupt practices will be stamped out will at least reduce the necessity for public servants to seek ‘something on the side.’
If the truth be told the government has shown no real determination, up to now, to stamp out corruption in the public service. Incidents of bribery, fraud and other corrupt practices in public sector entities continue unchecked without any corresponding effort to respond to what has long become an endemic practice. One of the points that watchers of corruption continue to make, for example, is that, somehow, despite the scale of corruption in the public sector, those who are caught and punished are almost always people who are low on the food chain. In one particularly glaring case a very senior public official who, some years ago, was fingered in a multi-million dollar duty-free racket has slipped quietly back into the public service, once again, in a position of influence. The point to be made here is that Minister Westford will have political battles to fight if she is to keep the promise which she made in parliament to rid the public service of corrupt practices.
Finally, if the Minister is to keep her word government must stop turning a blind eye to what – by the admission of the President of the GCCI himself – is the complicity of some private sector elements in corrupt practices that impact on the private sector including the evasion of duties and taxes, under-invoicing, and the paying of kickbacks to officials responsible for revenue-collection, all of which continues to take place in full public view.
