Professor Trevor Munroe has appealed for greater consultation between management and workers in reforming the public sector.

"So far it has been top down, a ministry paper laid in the Parliament, the prime minister speaking ... . Agencies and departments need to call the workers together and ask them what your ideas to improve productivity are," Munroe said.

He argued that the approach being suggested could see workers putting forward ideas of how to reform their areas. He said that it could also save jobs.

Trim the gov't

More than 40,000 Jamaicans have lost jobs since the worldwide recession arrived at Jamaica's doorstep last year. The Govern-ment has also signalled it would be cutting jobs as part of the reform of the public sector. Prime Minister Bruce Golding said paying them was not sustainable.

"We will have to trim the size of Government, and I'm talking about the entire government bureaucracy, not just what is known as central government. The civil-service Establishment Order shows that there are 41,353 posts in the central government," the prime minister has said.

"But the total number of persons employed by Government in all its ministries, agencies and companies and statutory bodies who have to be paid every week or fortnight or month is 117,000. Some categories cannot be reduced."

He continued: "We need more nurses and pharmacists and policemen. But some departments and agencies will have to be eliminated because some of the traditional chores of government departments and agencies will have to be eliminated."

Speaking at a Gleaner Editors' Forum last Friday, Munroe said the Government erred in the way it communicated its decision to modernise the public sector.

"The perception is on the road (that it means job cuts) because we have inadequately adopted a bottom-up approach in discussing this matter. We should have called all the persons together after one month of the ministry paper being tabled to say, 'This is what we are trying to do. We are trying to improve productivity, we are not seeking to cut your job'," Munroe said.

Considering proposal

But Arthur Williams, state minister in the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, has said the approach proposed my Munroe is being considered.

"I know that the Public Sector Modernisation Unit proposes to, having received information from heads of departments, go on the ground and to meet with staff to get their views as well," Williams said.

Former permanent secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister, Patricia Sinclair-McCalla, has been asked to lead the modernisation team. The prime minister said he has given the team 18 months to "rein in this sprawling, expensive apparatus that we call Government".

daraine.luton@gleanerjm.com