Dear Editor,
Few would have heard of, or remembered, and possibly fewer would care about the fact that 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the formation of the National Personnel Officers’ Association (NPOA).
It all started when two young Assistant Personnel Managers, Earl John and Emammudeen Khan, successfully had a motion passed at a Bookers Sugar Estates’ Personnel Officers’ Conference, early in 1965 to form such an association.
The ground-breaking conference of personnel officers in government and industry was held on March 20, 1965, at the then Public Service Training Centre, Red House, High Street, Kingston.
The association was registered as a company limited by guarantee (No. 898) under the Companies Ordinance, Cap 328.
Some of its aims and objectives were:
* To establish and maintain an association for persons interested and concerned with the personnel function of management and to bring together such persons by means of conferences, meetings, the reading of papers and the promotion of research.
* To build up a body of knowledge of personnel management, and to stimulate interest in the importance of effective personnel management by the promotion of the exchange of information and ideas.
* To provide facilities for the study of, and enquiry and research into the personnel function of management and personnel management problems and to make known the results of such enquiry, examination and research by publishing, producing and distributing or assisting to publish, produce and distribute literature, books, pamphlets, films, posters, periodicals and journals.
* To establish and maintain a library and collection of literature, films and other material relating to the principles and practices of personnel management and to afford facilities for the use of the same. * To institute, establish and promote training courses, scholarships, grants, awards and prizes and to encourage education in the principles and practices of personnel management.
Out of an initial membership of 41 persons the first Committee of Management included the following:
EA Richards – Personnel Depart-ment, Bookers Central Services Ltd, Hony President; EB John – Bookers Sugar Estates Ltd, 22 Church Street, Hony Vice President; C Outridge – Public Service Commission, GPO Building, Hony Treasurer; Daphne McWatt – Lonsdale-Hands Guyana Ltd, Bank of Guyana Building, Hony Secretary; L Muss – Guyana Graphic Ltd, Bel Air Park, Hony Asst Secretary.
Members of the Committee:
H B Davis – Bookers Sugar Estates Ltd; V de Cambra – Wales Estate; G Marshall – Finance Minis-try; Elsie Yong – Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund Committee; S Daly – Transport and Harbours Department
Within its first year of existence the NPOA’s activities included several lectures, symposia and one successful 7 day training course on ‘Selection and Recruitment’. But more interesting was the synergistic relationship which existed at the time between the government (public service) and the private sector. This was very much highlighted not only in the membership of the first Committee of Management; but evidenced by the two presentations made at the first NPOA Conference, namely: ‘Personnel Administration Practice in the Public Service of British Guiana’ – by the Chairman, Public Service Commission, and ‘Personnel Management in industry in British Guiana’ – by the Education and Training Officer, Bookers Sugar Estates.
In brief, however, the programmes of the NPOA became so popular that managers of all tints and hues cried to become members. The transition into the consensually agreed Guyana Institute of Management (GIM) to accommodate all managers was finally effected in 1969.
It was the GIM which started the programmes of full houses of early morning Breakfast Lectures, at the relatively new Pegasus Hotel. The first modestly produced magazine was titled ‘Developing Manage-ment.’ Its importance lay in the reproduction of the text of the first Breakfast Lecture titled: ‘An experiment in the Development of an Industrial Relations Jurisprudence’ (copies of which can be made available on request). The lecturer was J E M Adams a former Guyanese Senior Labour Officer, who after working in other territories of the Caribbean, had settled in Trinidad & Tobago where he was eventually appointed a judge in the country’s first Industrial Relations Court.
There is so much more to this story to be told, which leaves us to wonder what progress we have actually achieved 50 years on in the development of what are now known as Human Resources Managers.
Yours faithfully,
E B John