Dear Editor,
Guyana continues to be exceptional, outnumbered as we are by foreign investors from more developed countries, who practise, discuss, publish and teach Human Resources Management in their respective education institutions to some of which GOAL scholarships have been awarded recently.
Since independence Guyana’s Public Service Administrators have been persistently employing candidates for Personnel Management, beginning glaringly with ‘Personnel Clerks’ who derisibly can aspire, and in fact are promotable to the Grade of:
i) Personnel Officer I; then to
ii) Personnel Officer II; facilitated to the grade of
iii) Senior Personnel Officer (exceptionally Senior Management Services Officer)
The next grade includes the increasingly scarce position of:
iv) Principal Personnel Officer; which leaves
v) the position of Chief Personnel Officer quite singular
Exceptionally however, in the Ministry of Public Service can be found descriptors which infer some competency in Human Resources Management.
Meanwhile published vacancies in the Private Sector certainly indicate that member organisations aspire to operating with reasonable success Human Resources Management and Develop-ment programmes that would logically include Succession Planning, which, interestingly enough, obtains in several Public Service agencies, albeit to the substantive indifference of the Ministry of Public Service.
It has to be stressed that there is substantive differential in knowledge and competency content between ‘Personnel’ and ‘Human Resources’ Management. One is also reminded of Personnel Officers differing in the decision-making authority and image from those of Personnel Managers.
So that when one checks the recently published Scholarship Programme (2023/24) of the Ministry of Public Service, prospective employers are frustrated at the absence of this critical human developmental aspect of management, and must ponder about having to resign to job candidates being limited to the following areas of study:
a) Public Management
b) Social Work; and even
c) Psychology
In the circumstances there is certainly need for the Ministry to brainstorm with UG about filling this fundamental competency gap as a matter of both personal and organisational urgency – in the national leadership interest!
But more immediately consideration has to be given to the management of the careers of all the technical candidates who qualify for employment, and who would need counselling and support of a more personal, humane, morale boosting, and even of an exceptionally spiritual kind – in order to be exemplars of their subordinates.
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
