Dear Editor,
`Step by Step there will be improvements to our deal with Exxon’
Admittedly, the captioned subject has not been given the attention it deserves, by the undersigned. More competent commentators have expounded with authority on various aspects of the subject.
But one could not help reflecting on the following observation, made by Wesley Kirton in his letter in Stabroek News of Thursday 13th February, 2020:”Just remember that the resources from oil and gas will provide for better infrastructure….roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, hinterland airstrips etc. as well as improved health care, education, public safety and security and investment in agriculture, forestry and tourism, among others. Thousands of jobs stand to be generated for Guyanese.”
From the perspective of a Human Resources Management and Organisational Development practitioner of authoritative experience, the first reaction to the above is that it is all wishful thinking.
Roads and Bridges
The impressive record of inadequately designed and constructed roads and bridges right here in the capital city of Georgetown hardly supports the expectation that those involved, and particularly contractors, can rise to providing ‘better’ standards. Chances are there will be higher cost contracts for the same deficient quality of work.
Schools, Hospitals
a) Schools do not fall under ‘infrastructure’. Right now they identify, more or less, with quite a deficient education system.
Schools have to be inhabited, preferably by well trained teachers. So that the envisaged proliferation of schools has to be complemented with a comparably wider programme of relevant teacher training. Even so, with the ridiculously poor salaries currently offered to teachers based on a grade structure designed in the colonial era, it will be quite surprising if the dream for ‘schools’ (including teacher training institutions) can be realised in the foreseeable future.
The question also has to be asked about where and in whom obtains the capacity to reformulate the education programme necessary to respond to the new and changing job requirements of the technologies to be introduced.
Incidentally, how would the University of Guyana be reorganised to meet new and predictable qualification demands?
In the final analysis a most comprehensive strategic plan will have to be designed for the future of education.
b) Hospitals
Certainly the same issues as above apply to our Public Health System. Upgrading the performance effectiveness of the public health system has much less to do with more hospitals, but more urgently with higher standards of health care. For example, of immediate urgency to be addressed is the disproportionate percentage of under-qualified nursing personnel across the public health sector.
At the same time the quality of its management at most levels is at least suspect.
Following upon the above, further reference to ‘Improved health care, education’ is only repetitious.
Public Safety and Security
To suggest, glibly perhaps, that the above area of operations can be improved is somewhat beguiling.
Given the record of increasing malfunctioning of this portfolio over the past two decades, the plea has to be for a major reconstruction of what is instructively titled as Police Force. The psychology of the bolded word runs deeply in informing the behaviours of its members, reflective of a chronically inexpert selection and recruitment process.
So that the differentials in the job hierarchy and authority structure are not reconciled in the publicly exposed quality of decision-making.
One example is that of the productive Cadet Scheme created in the Burnham era which, with appropriate overseas education and training, produced highly respected Commissioners of Police.
Now there is little evidence of Commissioners of the Caribbean meeting and learning from one another.
Not totally irrelevant is that traffic management in Guyana is perceived to translate into pervasive health hazard.
‘Agriculture, forestry and tourism sectors’
a. Under ‘Agriculture’ will still fall sugar and the Guyana Sugar Corpo-ration which is now in a state of deconstruction. The platitudes currently being emitted in campaigns in relation to the sugar industry do not portray any creative strategy for an institution that has the longest history as an organisation outside of the public service.
It has consistent recruitment procedures, conditions of employment, performance management and succession plans and procedures, education and training programmes, an internationally monitored Occupa-tional Health & Safety programme, a comprehensive contributory health scheme; and a very disciplined financial management and reporting arrangements.
Clearly the above is infrastructure to build on.
How coordinated are the ‘forestry and tourism sectors’?
‘Thousands of jobs stand to be generated for Guyanese’
The above hopes have been expressed by several commentators, political and civil; but one may have missed reference to any specific types of jobs, indicators of the levels of skills and competencies that will be necessary at the operative, technical, supervisory and management (including executive) levels, respectively.
The optimisms expressed ignore the real possibility of invader competition. Did someone say ‘Local Content’?
When all is said and hoped for, none of it grapples with the reality of an urgent and major reconstruction of the Public Service where substantively new and changing scenarios will have to be analysed and advised upon, at an imperatively better response rate. There will be need for a human resources capacity that must react with the confidence which comes with authority assigned to the decision-maker.
The top-down style of telling knowledgeable specialists what to think will have to be substantively revised. There will have to be more consensual decision-making, more team-building, so that responses to new and foreign enquiries would earn respect.
If we start out mis-stepping the image initially portrayed would be hard to retrieve by the organisation concerned; as well as have a spill-over effect.
In the final analysis it is the priority concentration of developing the right human resources capacity that would redound to ‘better infrastructure’ and everything related.
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
