GUYANA inherited an impeccably professional public service from the British, but from the inception of the PNC’s administration of national affairs, jobs for the favoured in the public service destabilised the entire system, and de-motivated the professionals from executing their respective mandates to the optimum, until corruption and unprofessionalism, even undignified behaviour, became a norm rather than the exception into what was once a proud bastion of service to the nation.

Reduced to a level where the main consideration for employment was not qualification or merit but possession of a PNC party card, the deterioration of the Public Service was swift and elemental; and the nation suffers until today from the fallout of the excesses of that era.

So Opposition Leader David Granger is being disingenuous at best, but in actuality very dishonest, when he blames the PPP administration for anomalies in the general behaviour of public servants, because bribery and corruption became endemic in the psyche of the entire public service — with minimal exceptions — during the reign of his party.

It became a norm for someone to pay for service –- in cash or kind — when seeking assistance from any institution within the Public and Justice Service systems. Until today, that sore in the national social demographic is still festering, and the pus stinks because, until today, the PNC still commands the loyalty of those sectors, and that party and its minions in the labour unions can still commandeer the employees within that sphere to act irrationally, and even to take to the streets to create mayhem and chaos, destroying the nation’s survival systems in the process.

The lewdness and vulgarity is another factor that has taken the Public Service down several notches in the public’s eyes, and one can still remember a teacher from St. Roses High School bending over and ‘mooning’ the media at the height of the protest against Mrs. Janet Jagan’s presidency.

That picture went viral on international media sites, and defined Guyana’s public service behaviour in the perception of the international audience.

Granger’s castigation of public servants as being corrupt as a result of the PPP/C administration’s neglect -– either through remuneration or benefits to the sector — has rightly been condemned by the PPP. Granger’s claim that the alleged corruption is being fostered by low salaries has no basis in fact, since it was the PPP/C, under the presidency of Dr. Cheddi Jagan, that rejected IMF diktat and unfroze public servants’ wages from the measly $2,000 per month to which Hoyte had condemned them to satisfy the exigencies of the then prevailing socio-economic dynamics and the IMF conditionalities, strictured by the IMF-driven Economic Recovery Programme (dubbed Empty Rice Pots by the suffering Guyanese masses).

And it was also Dr. Jagan who restored bargaining power to the trade unions, which had become toothless poodles and/or PNC stooges during the era of PNC rule. So the contention of the PPP: that Granger has no moral authority to speak on such matters, since his party pauperized public servants whilst in government by paying insignificant wages which were gobbled up by high inflation, has sound basis in fact.

The People’s Progressive Party’s response to an article in the Monday, March 17, edition of the Kaieteur News, captioned “Corruption festered by low Public Servants morale – Granger” is a passionate rejection of Granger’s accusation that public servants engage in corrupt practices because of inadequate wages and salaries paid to them, which in turn leads to low morale.

According to a PPP statement, “The PPP takes strong objection to the statements and insinuations made by Granger against public officials, the vast majority of whom serve the people of this country with high levels of dedication, competence and professionalism.

“To suggest that our public servants are prone to facilitate corrupt practices in the exercise of their duties is tantamount to an attack on their integrity and professionalism.

“No less disrespectful is the attempt by Granger to draw a link between the salaries paid to public servants and the standard of professionalism that currently exists in the public service.

“The PPP is of the view that a public apology should be made to the nation’s public servants by Granger, whose party not only lacks the political and ethical morality to speak on the issue of public servants’ salaries and conditions of work, after having pauperized public servants when the PNC held power by offering salary increases which were well below the rate of inflation on a consistent basis.”

The PPP release goes on to state, “One of the first tasks embarked upon by the PPP when it assumed office in October 1992 was to significantly increase the emoluments of public servants, which at that time was a paltry G$3,000 per month. The salaries of public servants at the minimum level have seen consistent increases, reaching today $G40, 000. In addition, the PPP/C Government has kept inflation rates in check, unlike what obtained under the PNC regime, when real wages were gobbled up by the monster of inflation.”

Public servants, who were treated as virtual slaves under a PNC administration when they were forced to march and stand at road corners for hours in all kinds of weather to salute their leaders; work for free on holidays and weekends at Hope Estate and in the cane fields or face dire sanctions, including loss of jobs, have, under a PPP/C watch, come into their own with annual salary increases, augmented with a multiplicity of benefits, including low-cost and easily-accessible housing, free healthcare, and increased pension and care packages, among others.

These are a continuum of testimony that public servants are not constrained to dishonest acts through neglect of any kind by the current administration, which must be commended for offering salary increases to public servants every year since its assumption to office in 1992, even in times of regional and international socio-economic crises, when even developed countries are forced to impose salary cuts and retrench public servants.