Dear Editor,
Over the past two decades I have persistently reviewed the Estimates of the Public Sector, perhaps in some instances, more closely than the contending parties.
Not unusually there have been some curiosities – at least to me – which appear to continually slip through a very wide net. For example I have always sought advice as to whether or not constitutional bodies qualify to be described as (Budget) agencies.
Amongst these are the Teachers’ Service Commission, the Guyana Elections Commission and the Director of Public Prosecutions, as well as the curious twinning of Public and Police Service Commission.
Yet topical at this immediate point in this time, is a public discourse about the accountability relationship between the constitutional office of the Ministry of the Presidency and the counterpart constitutional Police Service Commission in particular, as if in fact the latter is disaggregated from the Public Service Commission, as has been consistently notified in the National Estimates.
En passant, page 75 shows Programme 5 of the Ministry of Public Security as the Fire Service – which is headed only by a Deputy Chief Fire Officer (Grade 12). The incumbent has been misguidingly referred to as Fire Chief, for at least a decade.
Keep asking nevertheless for a clarification of ‘Deputy’ to a non-existent ‘Chief’.
Yours faithfully,
E B John
