ALLEGATIONS which suggest that the government has been partisan in its appointment of permanent secretaries (PSs) were on Friday debunked by Minister of State, Joseph Harmon.
Commentator Sase Singh has accused the government of practicing “ethnic preferences” in the selection of permanent secretaries but Harmon rubbished the statements made by Singh and called them “nonsense”.

In a letter published on Friday, June 16, 2017 in the Kaieteur Newspaper, Singh said there is evidence of ethnic bias under the David Granger-led administration.
“As an example, look at the 16 permanent secretaries in the Granger Government. Fifteen of them are from one race and these facts cannot be washed away.”
However, Harmon made it clear that his administration is not involved in any acts of prejudice in its selection of officers to serve. He explained that in March, many of the permanent secretaries were reassigned to different ministries while others were relieved of their duties.

“If you examine that list carefully that Mr Sase Singh gave you, you’d find that all of those persons were either permanent secretaries or deputy permanent secretaries at the time. So, I want to debunk that nonsense that Mr Sase Singh is going on with and [say] that he should examine things carefully before he continues on this charade of trying to create a new bogie, as if to say this government is ethnic cleansing and is only appointing certain persons to positions.”

The minister of state told reporters during his post-Cabinet press briefing that Singh started on the premise that if somebody is not Indian then he or she is Afro-Guyanese.
“…so anybody who was on the list, who was not an Indian was considered to be black and he should examine things carefully, because some of these things affect people and they are very upset and annoyed when they are branded in a certain way by people who write and do not do their research properly,” he related.
Harmon said too, that all of the permanent secretaries have been in the system all along but noted that in an effort to allow elevation in the public service, there were internal selections for permanent secretaries once a vacancy exists.
“We look internally in the public service for the senior persons who have been there serving and have the qualifications and we move them up.”

The minister of state said too that the recent reassignment of permanent secretaries is as a result of a need for more qualified and professional permanent secretaries.
Harmon added that currently there are over 50 persons training to enter the public service, and noted that at the intermediary level public servants are part of several training programmes which cater to the developmental needs of the public service and improving capacity and knowledge of permanent secretaries.

“Into all of this we looked at the levels of the permanent secretaries and at that level what we found was some persons in the system who needed some upgrading training and as such we got some of them, three or four on a programme called the Caribbean Leadership Programme.”
Harmon assured that the move to enhance the capacity of the public service stems from the recently-conducted Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the terms and conditions of the public service.
“That CoI made certain recommendations and some we have started implementing,” he stated.